Trouble in Paradise
by Horsebot3000
Summary: Oliver, Felicity and Digg head to Hawaii on Queen Consolidated business. Felicity is anticipating a week of sipping cocktails and sunning herself between meetings, but those plans quickly go out the window. She really should have known better.
1. Chapter 1

**Ok, I'm back with another multi-fic story. I'm going to aim for 7-8 chapters for this, but we'll see how we go. Spoilers up to the end of season 2. I imagine this taking place around 3-4 months after the finale, with Oliver having regained control of Queen Consolidated. I'm just going to go ahead and rate this as M, just in case.**

**Enjoy!**

**Chapter 1**

"And you can see that growth is projected to be 5 per cent in the next fiscal quarter, followed by 8 per cent once we roll out the new upgrade."

Felicity Smoak's gaze flicks over to Oliver Queen, CEO and billionaire by day and masked vigilante by night, over the top of her tablet. For once he's actually paying attention to a pitch and the expression on his face clearly falls into the "I'm interested in what you're saying" category, rather than the "I'm sitting here under sufferance picturing all the ways I could kill you with one finger" category. She has to admit, it's a pretty nice change.

She hides a grin as his gaze shifts briefly from the large screen before them to her.

"That all sounds pretty impressive, Mr Reynolds." Oliver says, leaning back slightly in his chair and fixing his gaze back on the screen. "I'd be interested in arranging a face to face so we can discuss this in greater detail."

"Of course, Mr Queen." Jack Reynolds, co-founder of Intuit Media, smiles over the video conference screen. "Perhaps you'd be interested in joining us out here? We're at a rather delicate stage of our process at the moment and I know my partner would prefer to stay here and oversee the work personally."

Oliver nods. "Completely understandable. Miss Smoak, can you clear time in our schedule?" he turns to Felicity, who tries to contain her excitement at Oliver's use of "our".

"Of course, Mr Queen. I'll liaise directly with Mr Reynolds and his team to square away a time that suits everyone." She smiles politely at Jack while flicking to Oliver's schedule on her tablet.

"I'll leave you to organise that then. Thank you again, Mr Reynolds. I look forward to catching up in person very soon." Oliver stands, buttoning the top button of his charcoal suit jacket. He leaves the conference room just as Felicity starts suggesting possible dates that work for Oliver.

He's sitting at his desk going over the financial information and technical specifications that Jack had sent through prior to the meeting when Felicity bounds in, practically vibrating with excitement.

"Oliver, you did mean that I could come too, didn't you? Or was that "our" like the royal "our"? I mean, you do talk about yourself in third person a lot, so it wouldn't surprise me if you said "our" but actually just meant "my"." He grins as she babbles away, enjoying her undisguised longing to accompany him on the trip.

He decides to put her out of her misery. "Of course I meant you as well, Felicity. I can't close this deal without your help."

She actually does a small fist pump. "Oh! That was unexpected. I normally save those for when I'm hacking."

"Did you find a time with Jack?" Oliver asks. She nods, flicking the screen on her tablet and bringing Oliver's calendar back up.

"Yeah. The only really critical appointment you have in the next week is with Mr Steele and the president of Starling National Bank. If I switch that to this afternoon, we can leave tomorrow."

"Sounds good. I'll leave you to sort out the details. I wouldn't mind dedicating a bit of time to this acquisition, Felicity, so why don't you clear my schedule for the whole week." Her eyes light up at the suggestion.

"I have absolutely no problem with that plan. A whole week in Hawaii!" she's bouncing up and down ever so slightly on the balls of her feet and Oliver can't hide his smile.

"You do realise we'll actually be there to work, don't you?" he points out.

Felicity rolls her eyes. "I seriously doubt we'll be working the _entire_ time. You're not going to stop me from packing my bikini, Oliver Queen. Not that you'll be there when I'm packing, obviously, because that would be weird."

She glances up at the choking noise Oliver emits. He's holding a glass of water to his lips and he quickly takes another sip.

"Water went down the wrong way." He explains, coughing slightly and trying desperately to get the mental picture of Felicity wearing a bikini out of his head. He doesn't succeed.

"Well, I'm going to go and call Walter to reschedule and then I'll organise the jet and some accommodation. Is Digg coming too?" she asks, pausing half way out of Oliver's office.

"It'd be odd if Oliver Queen didn't travel with his bodyguard, so yes, unless Digg has a reason to stay here." He reasons.

"There you go with that third person again." Felicity points out. "I'll give Digg a call. I'm pretty sure Lyla is in Europe somewhere at the moment, but I'm not sure when she's getting back."

She's almost at the door when Oliver calls out. "Can you also give Roy a call? He'll need to work nights the next week while we're gone."

Felicity nods and heads out to her desk, her heels clicking on the polished floors. Oliver watches as she settles herself at her desk and leans over to snag the headset of her phone. She chats for a few minutes and then turns slightly to shoot Oliver a thumbs up, signally that Walter is able to reschedule their meeting.

He turns back to the paperwork, occasionally glancing up to see Felicity speaking on the phone or typing away at her tablet. Within half an hour his email pings and he clicks through to find a neat itinerary detailing their schedule for the next week. He smiles as he notes the third day has been designated "cocktails by the pool day".

* * *

The next morning, Felicity rushes over to the door at the sound of the bell. She throws it open to find Oliver outside, dressed in an impeccably cut light grey suit. His shirt is crisp and blindingly white and his pale blue tie brings out the colour in his eyes. He looks every inch the powerful CEO, albeit a much more attractive and muscular CEO than the ones she normally reads about in The Economist.

"Oliver! I wasn't expecting you to come upstairs. Give me a second." She hurries back to her room, scooping up her handbag and a floppy hat. She pauses in the doorway, bracing herself with one hand while slipping a sandal on with the other.

"Again, Felicity, we are going to Hawaii to work." Oliver can't help but let his gaze slowly take in Felicity from head to foot. Rather than her usual work attire, she's wearing a black sleeveless dress splashed with bright purple and blue parrots and flowers. It reaches to just above the knees, with a deep vee neck. Colourful beads grace her neck and wrists and her hair has been allowed to dry in its natural waves and is flowing down over her shoulders. She's forgone her glasses for contacts and her bright blue eyes are sparkling with excitement.

"I know that, but our first meeting isn't until this afternoon. I plan on soaking up a little sun before then. Don't worry, my suitcase is full of boring work clothes."

Oliver can't think of a single work outfit of Felicity's that could possibly be described as boring. He reaches for her suitcase, ignoring the handle that can be pulled out to wheel it along and lifting it up.

"Ready to go?" he asks. "Digg's downstairs with the car."

She pulls the hat on, lifting her chin up so she can see him from under the brim. "I am so ready." She sets the security alarm and locks the door behind them, then follows him down the hall, her beads clicking softly together as she walks.

"I'm a little bit excited, this is my first trip to Hawaii." She confesses in the elevator. Oliver glances over, one eyebrow raised.

"I would never have guessed." He replies dryly. She gives him a little shove, grinning, and he pretends to stagger from the blow.

"By the way, what on earth have you got in this bag?" he asks, hefting it slightly.

"Is it a bit heavy for you?" she asks with mock concern. In response he easily lifts it straight up, holding it her eye level.

"Show off." She mutters as he lowers it back down. "For your information, I intend on using or wearing every item in that bag. Felicity Smoak packs smart."

"So how many tablets and back up laptops did you bring?" Oliver asks innocently.

"Ha, ha, ha. Joke's on you. I only brought two tablets." Felicity responds, nose lifted in the air.

Digg is leaning against the Bentley down in the parking garage and he grins when he sees Felicity in her tropical wear. He's dressed in his usual "Oliver Queen's bodyguard" attire of a slim fit black suit and tie over a white shirt. "Looking forward to catching some rays, Miss Smoak?"

"Sure am, Digg. I'm also claiming first dibs on deck chairs. I'm very particular about deck chair placement." She slides into the back seat, joined quickly by Oliver as Digg hefts her suitcase into the trunk, exclaiming at the weight.

Felicity keeps up a steady stream of chatter on the way to hangar where the Queen Consolidated jet is kept, alternating between offering her opinion of Intuit Media's proposal, double checking the hotel reservations, wondering whether the restaurant reviews online are accurate and debating whether or not she's brought along enough sunscreen.

Oliver offers the occasional murmured response, catching Digg's eye in the rear view mirror every so often to exchange a smirk over Felicity's very obvious excitement.

She's less enthusiastic once they actually board the plane, anticipating her usual motion sickness.

"In all the excitement of the trip I forgot we actually have to fly there." She says unhappily, firmly tightening her seat belt and setting a handful of sick bags within easy reach.

Oliver settles in beside her, reaching over to give her hand a brief squeeze before buckling his own belt. Digg sits opposite, immediately relaxing his guard now they're securely on the plane.

"We'll be there before you know it." Oliver says, pulling out his paperwork to read. "Why don't you kick off your shoes, de-hat and try and get some sleep?"

Felicity wordlessly agrees, toeing off her sandals and dropping the floppy hat onto her handbag beside her. She pulls her legs up, angling herself towards Oliver so she can curl into her seat and rest her head against the back of the seat. Her eyes flutter closed, but as the plane begins to taxi along the runway, she reaches over to snag Oliver's hand until they're safely up in the air.

* * *

"Couldn't you have chosen a different car?" Felicity asks from the doorway of the plane, looking down with distaste at the hire car waiting for them on the tarmac. Digg glances back over his shoulder.

"This is exactly the same as the Bentley we just left in Starling, Felicity."

"Yeah, that's my point. Shouldn't we have something a little more suited to the environment? Like a convertible? Preferably red?"

Digg rolls his eyes and Oliver stifles a grin as they reach the unsatisfactory car and the driver loads the luggage.

"Meanwhile, how are you two not roasting in those wool suits? At least some of us dressed for the weather." She swishes the hem of her sun dress, tipping her head back so she can see them from under the brim of her hat. Oliver shrugs. Hot weather hasn't really bothered him since his return from Lian Yu where, more often than not, it was raining, cold and miserable. After all that he craves the sunlight.

"Aloha and welcome to Hawaii, Miss." The driver smiles, dropping a lei of hot pink tropical flowers over Felicity's head. She grins in delight, drawing the blooms up to her face and inhaling their scent.

The three of them slide into the back of the car, Digg shifting somewhat uncomfortably at being a passenger for once. Felicity pulls out her tablet and brings up the website of the resort she's booked.

"I booked us one of the bungalows. It's secure from other guests, has four bedrooms and even a private pool." She glances up at Oliver. "I figured you'd prefer to be out of the eyes of the public as much as possible. The hotel manager assured me it's completely private, no chance of any opportunistic guests snapping some photos of you to sell to TMZ."

"Looks nice." He replies, glancing over her shoulder at the pictures on her tablet.

"When's the first meeting with Intuit?" Digg asks.

Oliver checks his watch. "It's at 4. What are we, three hours behind Starling?" at Felicity's nod, he adjusts the time on his watch. "It's eleven now, so we've got a bit of time to relax before heading into the city."

"Great. I can't wait." Felicity enthuses. "Would it be wrong to have a cocktail before an important business meeting?"

"I'm sure we can manage that." Oliver replies.

Felicity is suitably impressed as they arrive at the resort. The gardens are exotic, expansive and immaculately maintained. The main building is low and modern, with plenty of glass windows. She glances to Oliver beside her, who is flipping through paperwork (he stubbornly refuses to accept a tablet with electronic documents, preferring the feel of paper in his hands) and then to Digg, whose expression shows little of the awe she knows her own face shows.

She isn't surprised. Oliver grew up the indulged son of billionaire parents and probably spent his childhood visiting every exclusive hideaway there is, and Digg had worked for some pretty important clients before being hired by Mrs Queen to shadow Oliver upon his return from Lian Yu.

The driver continues past the sweeping main entrance, which actually gets Oliver's attention.

"It's okay," Felicity explains upon seeing his questioning glance. "I arranged with the manager to have him meet us directly at the bungalow. It's an exclusive resort, but I'd rather limit exposure as much as possible."

Oliver nods his appreciation, turning his gaze to the window as they approach the gates of the private bungalow Felicity has secured for the week. After losing control of Queen Consolidated in Isobel's coup, the press attention had been intense as each media outlet speculated on what Oliver Queen's next move might be. They'd practically forgotten him as he worked hard with a team of lawyers and Walter to regain his CEO position, only to follow him with even more interest once he was back on top.

"Mr Queen's party," they hear the driver tell the security guard, passing over documentation.

Oliver lowers the window long enough for the guard to confirm their identities and then they're allowed through. Felicity's spent the night poring over photos of this place, but in reality it's even more opulent than she expected. The bungalow is enormous by the standards of her small apartment and as she moves through the entry way, she can see the sun reflecting off the private pool outside. The furnishings are lavish and large vases of fresh tropical flowers can be found dotted around the room.

The hotel manager greets Oliver like an old friend, introducing the staff that will be on call during their stay, all of whom Felicity and Digg have vetted with the tiniest of invasive and slightly illegal background checks. Within fifteen minutes, the staff have disappeared with the promise of refreshments to come, leaving Oliver, Felicity and Digg to themselves.

"Well I don't know about you two, but I'm going swimming." Felicity announces.

"I might go through this paperwork outside," Oliver says, turning to John. "Digg?"

Diggle is glancing around the room, taking in the various security measures. "I might do a quick sweep of the grounds and then I'll join you."

"I'm going to go change." Felicity says, moving towards the room that's been allocated to her. It's almost as big as her entire apartment and it isn't even as big as the master suite that's been allocated to Oliver. "Oliver, please change out of your suit. We're in Hawaii and you don't have a meeting for hours. Live a little."

He watches as she walks off, her sandals slapping softly against the plush carpet. He turns to see Digg eyeing him with amusement.

"I'm with her, man. It's been a crazy few months since you got control of QC back, not to mention everything that's gone down in the past six years. If anyone deserves a break, it's you." Digg points out.

Oliver sighs, running one hand over his closely cropped hair. The idea of just sitting and relaxing seems foreign to him after years of activity and constantly having to be on his guard, but it sounds appealing. "Fine. But no flip flops."

* * *

Oliver has to admit, it's pretty nice to just sit by the pool, drink in hand and sun warming his skin, even if he's got a pile of papers to go through. He's wearing board shorts and a tank top – items he hadn't actually packed himself but is certain Felicity instructed Raisa to sneak into his luggage. They're the sort of clothes that the old Oliver Queen lived in during the summer months. Digg joins him, wearing casual clothes, the bulge of his gun visible at his back.

He's alerted to Felicity's arrival by the pad of her bare feet on the pavers and he glances up, every nerve end jumping to attention at what he sees.

She's wearing an aqua blue halter neck bikini with a sheer white sarong knotted around her waist. As she walks, the filmy fabric floats around her, revealing flashes of her toned legs.

"Digg," she calls, approaching them. "Can you do my back? I can't reach." She holds out a bottle of sun lotion, which Digg accepts, patting the foot rest in front of his deck chair for her to sit on.

Oliver finds himself watching as she takes a seat, flipping her hair over one shoulder to expose her back. He wonders absently why she didn't ask _him_ to help her, but he's grateful she didn't put that temptation in front of him.

Lotion applied, she settles in the chair between Oliver and Digg, stretching out her legs and wiggling her toes, the nails of which are a bright canary yellow.

"This is the life." She murmurs happily, accepting a drink from the tray that had been left earlier.

"I thought you were going swimming?" Oliver asks casually, turning his attention back to his papers.

"Got to wait twenty minutes for the lotion to kick in. I don't want to have to reapply." She sips on her drink, pulling her tablet out of the small bag she'd brought outside before taking a picture of the pool area. Before Oliver looks up, she takes a quick snap of him too, in full CEO concentrating mode, frowning as he reads his papers, but dressed like a beach bum. He obviously hadn't double checked his suitcase after she'd called Raisa asking her to add some casual clothes to Oliver's bag, knowing that otherwise it would consist of suits and running clothes.

Digg pulls a face as she turns the camera on him and she takes a quick selfie with Digg peering ominously over one shoulder, one eyebrow raised.

After an hour or so of lounging in the hot sun, Felicity decides it's time to get in the pool. She stands up, feeling a bit self-conscious about taking off her sarong in front of Oliver and Digg, but she swallows that down as she reminds herself about their complete lack of shyness about stripping off their shirts in front of her, and quickly unties the knot, dropping the silky garment on her seat, along with her sunglasses.

She rechecks the ties on her bikini top and bottoms, dreading the thought of them coming loose, then takes a breath and dives into the pool.

Oliver starts at the feel of cool water splashing onto his legs and looks up from the paper he was engrossed in to see Felicity surfacing in the middle of the pool, pushing her long hair out of her face.

"How's the temperature?" Digg calls out.

She does a few breaststrokes towards the edge of the pool. "Not too bad, on the cool side, but quite nice in this heat. You coming in?"

Digg shakes his head. "Maybe another day. I want to get the feel of this place before dropping my guard."

She turns to Oliver. "Oliver?"

"I'm not really in to swimming." He replies. His mother's insistence on he and Thea taking twice-weekly lessons and swimming laps pretty much killed off any enjoyment they got from the large indoor pool at the Queen mansion.

"Oh come on. It's hot, this is refreshing, we're all alone with no one to see bigshot CEO Oliver Queen let loose." She sprawls back in the water, floating on her back and Oliver can't tear his eyes away as he takes in the flatness of her stomach, the curves of hips and waist and the fullness of her breasts.

She tilts her head back, her hands skimming along the surface to make herself drift slowly along. Oliver makes up his mind and before he can change it, quickly stands up, dropping his papers and peeling off his shirt. He takes a short running leap and cannonballs into the pool near Felicity, covering her with a wave of water in his wake and sending her briefly underwater.

Felicity resurfaces, spluttering, and all she can hear is Digg's laugh. "Oliver!" she cries, laughing along and pushing her hair out of her eyes. He's lazily swimming next to her, a shit eating grin on his face. She flicks water at him and then duckdives, trying to make a quick escape before he can retaliate. But this is Oliver Queen and he has the reflexes of a jungle cat. He snags her by the waist and suddenly she's being tossed easily up in the air squealing, splashing water over Digg as she hits the surface.

The look on Oliver's face is one she rarely sees. He's let down all the walls and there's pure joy radiating out. He grins at her and pounces, grabbing her again and throwing her in the air like she weighs nothing. She breaks the water's surface a few feet from him, enjoying the sight of his eyes sparkling with laughter.

"I thought you hated swimming." She asks, keeping her distance.

"I do, but this isn't really swimming." She shrieks as he moves towards her, and she darts away, splashing towards the side of the pool.

Before he can reach her, she's hoisted herself up and spun around to sit on the pool's edge, drawing her legs up out of his reach. "Time out, I've got water up my nose." She gasps.

Oliver takes in every inch of her as she wrings out her hair and worries at the knots on her bikini. He watches a bead of water rolling down her neck, tracing it down past her collarbones, down across the upper swell of one breast…

"Huh?" he looks up to see Digg standing at the edge of the pool. "You say something, Digg?"

"Yeah. I just thought it might be time for us to start getting ready for this meeting. It's nearly two."

"Crap!" Felicity scrambles to her feet. "It's going to take ages to get my hair decent in this humidity." She scoops up her stuff and hurries into the house, leaving a trail of damp footprints in her wake.

Oliver easily lifts himself out of the pool, avoiding Digg's knowing expression.

"Back to duty, I suppose." He says lightly.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Wow, I can't believe all the reviews, follows and favourites for the first chapter. Thanks so much! Sadly for our team, the dream of an easy week in Hawaii starts to go downhill this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!**

**Chapter 2**

"Mr Queen, welcome." Jack Reynolds shakes Oliver's hand firmly. It's a firm grip by business standards and Oliver limits his own to match it.

"Please, call me Oliver. You remember Miss Smoak?" his hand moves around to hover over Felicity's lower back as she reaches forward to shake hands with Reynolds. "And this is Mr Diggle, my personal security."

Digg nods a greeting, his eyes flicking around the room. They're in the small offices of Intuit Media, located in an office building in Honolulu's business district. They'd passed a security checkpoint in the lobby, but access to Intuit's floor is open to any visitor.

"I thought we'd have a basic meet and greet today, Oliver, followed by dinner, and then we can get into the details tomorrow?" Jack asks, leading them through to his office.

"Sounds good." Oliver replies. Digg signals that he'll stay put in the foyer and watches as Oliver and Felicity follow Jack.

"I'll admit, I was expecting someone from your Applied Sciences division to accompany you," Jack says, gesturing to two seats in front of his desk. Oliver unbuttons his jacket before he sits and Felicity slides into the seat beside him, crossing her legs and pulling her tablet out of her handbag. She brings the screen to life and then waits, pushing up her glasses.

"Since I regained the CEO position, Applied Sciences has fallen under my direct purview. And as well as being my executive assistant, Miss Smoak provides her technical expertise and advice on all matters concerning Applied Sciences." Oliver glances sideways to Felicity, shooting her a small smile before returning to attention to Reynolds.

"Oh? What's your background, Miss Smoak?" Reynolds asks, his tone polite, but his expression doubting. Felicity smiles back coolly. No doubt he'd assumed, like half of Queen Consolidated, that she and Oliver were sleeping together and he'd brought her along to Hawaii for skills other than the secretarial variety.

"I graduated from MIT in 2009, computer science and engineering." She allows a smile at the surprise on his face that appears briefly before being quickly covered.

"Miss Smoak was actually the one that reviewed your initial proposal and brought it to my attention. Her opinion is invaluable to me." Oliver says quietly in a voice that comes close to the one he uses on Starling's criminals. He wants this acquisition, but he won't tolerate anyone underestimating Felicity.

"Well then I should be making it my goal to convince Miss Smoak of my company's worth, shouldn't I?" Reynolds laughs, somewhat nervously. He's picked up that he was very close to insulting Felicity, and Oliver by extension. Felicity decides to cut him some slack. After all, Oliver has led all discussions to date with Intuit based on the advice she'd given him privately, so it's not unnatural for Reynolds to feel some surprise at her deeper involvement.

"Will we be meeting your partner today?" she asks, shifting the topic. Reynolds shoots her a grateful look.

"Tom's holed up with the tech team today, but he's promised to meet us later this evening for dinner. Perhaps you'd both like to meet the rest of the staff? Our numbers man is particularly keen to talk over the projections with you, Oliver."

"With pleasure." Oliver stands, rebuttoning his jacket. His tone still has the slightest edge that is perceptible only to Felicity. As Reynolds walks around his desk towards the door, she places her hand lightly on Oliver's forearm. He glances down and she shoots him a look to play nice. His expression softens ever so slightly and he gives her a slight nod.

* * *

"Good thing you left your bow in Starling." Felicity mutters forty five minutes later as they follow Digg to the car.

"Why's that?" Digg asks.

"Because Jack Reynolds was unconvinced of my ability to advise on Applied Sciences matters, and this one-" she jerks a thumb back in Oliver's direction "took offence and used his growly voice."

"He should have realised that your very presence at the meeting signalled your importance both to me and to Queen Consolidated." Oliver points out evenly.

Felicity rolls her eyes. "I'm not going to deny that it annoys me when people write me off as just your assistant, but it's not like Jack had anything to the contrary to go on. My official job title is still executive assistant to the CEO and my involvement in the video conferences with Intuit has primarily been to take notes and hand you documents. And let's be honest, he probably just thought I'm here as your bit on the side like Isobel used to assume."

"Hey." Oliver stops her with a hand to her arm. She looks up at him to see his brows drawn together in concern. "You know I can't do any of this without you, Felicity. You're the brains of this operation. I value you and the contribution you make."

She sighs. "I know you do. It'd just be nice if everyone else knew that instead of thinking I was just your blonde secretary."

He smiles. "I promise, from now on people will know exactly what part you play, okay?"

"I'd like that." She replies, placing her hand over his where it's still resting on her other arm.

"Ahem." They both look up at the sound of Digg clearing his throat. "Car's ready."

"Thanks, Digg." Oliver says, gently removing his hand from under Felicity's. He allows her to slide into the waiting car, then follows behind.

"So do we have time to go back to the hotel and change? This restaurant that Jack chose looks fancy and I don't think this dress is going to cut it." Felicity comments, gesturing down at the slim fitting, sleeveless royal blue dress she's wearing, before flicking at her tablet screen and bringing up the restaurant website.

Oliver checks his watch and nods. "I disagree about the dress, but yeah, we've got time. As long as you don't plan on spending another forty-five minutes fixing your hair like you did earlier."

Felicity swats at his arm. "Hey! You didn't see it when I got out of the shower. Not that that's something that you _would_ see, I mean, me getting out of the shower. Ugh! The point is, every one of those forty-five minutes was needed. This humidity is going to be the death of me."

Digg is snickering in the front seat and Felicity snags a tube of lip gloss out of her handbag and throws it at his head. She misses by a foot and scowls.

Half an hour later, Oliver is waiting in the lounge of the bungalow, adjusting his cufflinks. Digg checks his watch.

"We've got forty minutes until the reservation. Any chance Felicity is going to be ready sometime this century?" he asks Oliver.

"Felicity!" Oliver calls out. "We need to get going!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" she shouts back. "Geez. It's easy for you two. Put on a suit, instantly look gorgeous. Some of us require a little more work."

She hurries out of her room, heels in one hand, her handbag in the other. Her hair has been swept up into a messy bun and she's wearing a black cocktail dress that's cut high and is devastatingly simple in design. That is until she turns slightly to lean against a high backed chair to slip her shoes on and reveals the dress is cut daringly low at the back. Oliver's mind goes blank for a moment except for the thought that she can't possibly be wearing a bra with that dress.

"Okay, I'm ready." She announces, straightening up and smoothing down the front of her dress. She reaches up to pat her hair and then to ensure her small diamond stud earrings are in place.

"Looking good, Smoak." Digg proclaims, earning a wide smile from Felicity.

"Thanks, Digg." She glances over at Oliver and starts tutting. "Who taught you to tie a tie?"

Oliver's hand immediately goes to his throat. "What's wrong with my tie?"

Felicity advances on him and slaps his hands away. "That is not a knot suitable for a CEO, mister." She quickly loosens the silk fabric and reties it.

"There. Much better." She gently tightens the knot so it's sitting correctly, then rests her palms lightly on the lapels of his black suit jacket.

"Thanks. You look beautiful, by the way." He murmurs.

Felicity draws her hands back and offers him a smile at his compliment. "We should get going."

* * *

Felicity wakes up the next morning with a smile on her face. The dinner had been wonderful. Not only was the food fantastic, but Oliver had shamelessly sung her praises at the start of the evening, ensuring everyone present was in no doubt of her importance at Queen Consolidated with regards to her expertise in the Applied Sciences division. Felicity had never been one to crave approval from her superiors, but after a year of being judged by her hair colour and skirt length instead of her brains by everyone except Oliver and Digg (okay, maybe Roy and Sara, too), it was nice to have her value acknowledged publicly. She'd had several excellent conversations with Jack's partner, Tom Jennings, the technical nature of their discussion right up her alley.

She hears the soft murmur of voices out in the lounge area and checks her phone. It's only six thirty, but she figures it's time to get up. They've got a full day in the Intuit offices and she knows Oliver will be keen to get there early.

She slips a lightweight robe over her sleep shorts and tank top, bundles her hair up into a loose ponytail and pads out into the lounge to find Oliver and Digg freshly back from a run. Both are lightly sweating and stretching out. She pauses for a moment to enjoy the sight of a pair of very fit and very toned men in shorts and tight tshirts, before clearing her throat and making her presence known.

"If I'd known you were going running I would have come too." She says, wandering over to the table where a large tray of breakfast foods has been placed by the hotel's seemingly invisible staff.

"You run?" Oliver asks, leaning forward to stretch out his hamstring.

"Yeah. I try to get out most mornings and do five miles. And by five, I mean three and a half with a bit of a rest halfway. So obviously I wouldn't be able to keep up with you two. Any crazy parkouring today?" She bites into a croissant, humming with approval at the flaky pastry.

"Nope, just a strait ten miles followed by some crunches." Digg replies. He pauses mid stretch as the phone in his pocket starts to ring. He pulls it out and checks the screen. "It's Lyla. I'm just gonna take this in my room."

"Say hi from us," Felicity calls out after him, sinking down onto the lounge, one leg drawn up under her.

"I've got something for you," Oliver announces, moving over to sit beside her on the lounge. He's got a small box in his hands. "I made a call after our meeting yesterday and had these expressed overnight."

He pulls off the lid to reveal a thick stack of heavy cream cards. Felicity reaches over and pulls one out. "Oh!" she exclaims. It's a Queen Consolidated business card with her name and qualifications on it, her job title listed in stylish black print as 'Applied Sciences Technical Advisor and Executive Assistant to the CEO'.

"I'm sorry it's taken me so long to properly acknowledge your role." Oliver says.

She shoots him a smile and leans over to place a hand on his arm. "Oliver, I know you appreciate me. But I won't deny that it'll be nice to drop a few of these on certain desks at QC. Thank you."

His response is cut off when Digg wanders back into the main room, a shell shocked expression on his face.

"Digg?" Oliver asks. "Everything okay?"

"I don't know. Lyla's in the hospital."

Oliver and Felicity both jump to their feet, Felicity dashing over to Digg's side.

"Is she okay? Is the baby okay?" she asks urgently. "Is she still in Europe?"

"She's back in Starling. Apparently she collapsed after her flight back. The doctors are a little worried about her blood pressure and the baby's heart rate is low." Digg runs a hand over his face, his expression conveying shock and worry.

"I'll call the pilot. You need to get back to Starling to be with Lyla." Oliver pulls out his own phone.

Digg holds up a hand. "I can't do that, man. You need me here."

"John. This is your family and therefore not negotiable. Felicity and I will be perfectly fine. I'll even borrow one of the hotel's security guards that you and Felicity vetted if I think we need him. You need to get home and be with Lyla." Oliver says firmly, scrolling through his address book until he locates the correct name.

Digg merely nods, his shoulders slumping as his mind starts ticking over worse case scenarios.

"Hey," Felicity murmurs. "She's going to be fine and the baby is going to be fine, okay? I'm sure this is all just a precaution." She slides her arms around Digg's waist and presses her cheek against his chest. After a moment, his arms circle around her.

"Pilot can be ready to leave in forty minutes." Oliver announces, ending the call. "I'll get the hotel's driver here while you get your stuff."

Felicity draws back as Oliver approaches, stepping to one side as Oliver claps a hand on Digg's shoulder.

"Thanks, man." Digg sighs. "This means a lot."

"Family comes first, Digg." Oliver reaffirms. "Send Lyla our love, okay?"

* * *

"As you can see, this particular algorithm tracks all incoming call data and allows a background scan to be run at the same time searching for any other wireless feeds in the vicinity of the caller. There are some incredible possibilities for law enforcement with this particular feature."

Oliver sneaks a glance at Felicity to see her deeply engrossed in Tom Jennings' presentation. He understands enough about the technology himself to know what Tom's talking about, but he can see Felicity's mind ticking over with all manner of applications for the technology. They both suspect the full scope of its abilities would violate all sorts of privacy laws and regulations and therefore be unlikely to see the light of day in the wake of Snowden, but they'd earlier agreed that it would be perfect for the Arrow's less than legal operations.

It's nearly lunchtime and they've been engrossed in technical specifications all morning. He's a little glad that they'll be turning to the financial side of things in the afternoon, something he's more at home with.

He can see Felicity itching to ask a questions, her pen is tapping against her chin as her eyes focus on the visual presentation. He smothers a smile as he enjoys the sight of her in her element. Giving Felicity responsibility in the Applied Sciences division to supplement the drudgery of her necessary position as his executive assistant was one of the smartest moves Oliver Queen has made since he took Walter's suggestion that one Felicity Smoak was the best person in IT to take a latte-ruined laptop to.

"Miss Smoak?" Jennings smiles. "You look like you have a question or forty."

She smiles back. "I do indeed. I was wondering about the parameters of the background scan and whether those were predetermined or could be altered by the user to fit specific circumstances?"

As Jennings opens his mouth to reply, the conference room doors burst open, slamming back against the walls. Three armed men stand in the doorway, balaclavas over their heads. There's a shriek from Jack's secretary that is quickly muffled.

Oliver immediately tenses, but reins in his natural instinct to go on the attack. He and the other people in the room had naturally jumped to their feet at the sight of the men and he shifts himself more firmly in front of Felicity.

"Which of you is Tom Jennings?" one of the men asks. His voice is being filtered through a voice modulator very similar to the one Oliver uses as the Arrow. The gunman points his gun at them, their slow response irritating him.

"Me." Tom says, his voice shaking slightly. "I'm Tom Jennings."

The gunman fishes in his pocket and then tosses something small to Tom, who fumbles but makes the catch. "You will put all of the technical specifications for project XDC-52 on that drive. Do it now."

Oliver's jaw clenches. Project XDC-52 is the reason he and Felicity are in Hawaii. His glance flicks over to Tom and he sees the other man's hand shaking as he inserts the USB drive into the side of his laptop.

"Hurry up." The gunman barks. "You've got five minutes before I start shooting." His eyes flick around the people standing at the table and rest of Felicity. "I think I'll start with Blondie."

Oliver can't help the small growl that escapes from his throat as he steps directly in front of Felicity, blocking her from the gunman's line of sight. "Leave her out of this." He snaps.

He can see the gunman's smirk. "And what are you going to do about it, pretty boy?" He advances on Oliver and, before Oliver can react, viciously strikes him in the head with the butt of his shotgun.

Oliver's head snaps back and he stumbles slightly. Felicity gives a little cry, her hands reaching out and pressing against his back to keep him upright. He can feel the trickle of hot blood sliding down his temple and his eyes see stars for a moment.

"No one has to get hurt!" Tom shouts. "It's nearly transferred, just give me thirty more seconds."

The seconds tick by tensely as the gunman wait, their weapons more firmly pointed at various people around the room. Felicity is itching to dig through her handbag for something to staunch Oliver's head wound, which is bleeding profusely, but she suspects it's an action that wouldn't be welcomed.

Finally, Tom extracts the drive and tosses it back to the lead gunman, who neatly catches it and pockets it. Without another word they run from the room, leaving a shell shocked conference room full of executives.

Felicity immediately snags her handbag and locates a travel pack of tissues before shoving Oliver back down into his seat. She pulls a wad of tissues out and presses it against Oliver's temple, biting her lip at his slight wince of pain.

"Hold that." She instructs, lifting his right hand up to his head. He obeys, watching as she digs further into her bag.

"Are you okay, Oliver?" Jack asks shakily, hurrying around the table to his side. "Do you need an ambulance?"

"It's okay," Felicity responds. "He didn't lose consciousness and head wounds bleed a lot. It's worse than it looks."

Jack looks at Oliver for confirmation and he risks a small nod. "She's right. There's a doctor at our hotel that can see to it. You'd better call the police though, if someone in the office hasn't already."

He allows Felicity to check the wound to see if the blood has stopped flowing and she tuts in disapproval. "Here for one day and you end up with a head wound." She murmurs so none of the Intuit staff can hear her. "Here I was thinking this would be a suture-free week."

Oliver smiles up at her. "I can't remember the last one of those we had."

"Me either. Did you have to let him hit you? Surely Oliver Queen knows how to duck?" She knows he'll never actually fight back properly when he's not the Arrow.

"I probably could have. I was a little distracted by him calling me pretty boy." He confesses.

Felicity snorts. "That's what you were concerned about? Not the three gunmen, but the fact one of them pointed out you're pretty?"

"Hey!" Oliver objects. "I am _not_ pretty."

"Whatever." Felicity rolls her eyes. It's probably not the right time to tell Oliver that he isn't just pretty, but probably the most beautiful man she's ever seen. She doesn't think he'd take kindly to that revelation. "Just keep still, you're dripping blood onto your suit."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thanks for the reviews, follows and favourites. I write primarily for my own amusement, but it's so great to hear that people are enjoying it.**

**Hope you like this next chapter.**

**Chapter 3**

"Felicity Smoak. That's S-M-O-A-K." Felicity spells out for the police officer. She has one eye on the officer as he fills out the paperwork for her statement, the other on Oliver as he begrudgingly allows a paramedic examine his head wound. Despite their insistence that it could wait until they returned to the hotel, the 911 dispatcher had sent an ambulance along as soon as they'd heard someone had been injured.

"S-M-A-" The officer recited back. Felicity sighed and rummaged around in the handbag hanging from the crook of her elbow and extracted one of the new business cards Oliver had had made for her.

"It's on here, Officer." She smiled tightly as she handed over the card. After the initial terror of the gunmen's appearance, she had settled into a deep annoyance that they couldn't even leave Starling for a week without running headlong into some sort of trouble.

"And your reason for being here today, Miss Smoak?" The officer asked, pen poised.

"As you can see on my card, I work for Queen Consolidated, specifically I'm Mr Queen's executive assistant and I also advise him on technical issues related to our Applied Sciences division. We're here on business with Intuit. I'm not sure how much detail Mr Queen would like me to go into on that point, so you'd probably be better off addressing any specific questions regarding the business side of things to him." She replies, nodding her head in Oliver's direction where the paramedic is still fussing over him. She wonders idly whether the woman would be paying quite so much attention to what is really a fairly minor wound if it didn't happen to be on one of the country's richest, handsomest and most eligible men. She's not even doing the stitches, just putting some butterfly strips on as a temporary measure until the hotel doctor can see him.

"Can you describe what happened?"

Felicity is tempted to point out that he's already interviewed four other people and she doubts her story would be much different. Honestly, it's never this annoying when she's dealt with Lance. With a new found appreciation for the man she already thinks of fondly, Felicity describes the gunmen's sudden appearance in the middle of the meeting, their demands of Tom, Oliver trying to protect her and getting hit, the gunmen leaving when they got what they wanted.

"Are we done here, Officer?" she asks. "As you can see, Mr Queen has a head injury. I really think it would be good for him to return to the hotel. Would it be possible for someone to take his statement at a later time?"

"I'll check with a superior and let you know. I'll need to you to wait a while longer, Miss Smoak." The officer replies. Felicity offers him an encouraging smile and he wanders off to speak to one of the detectives that is talking to Reynolds and Jennings.

She glances over to see Oliver is finally free of his adoring paramedic and she heads over to his side.

"How's the head?" she asks, taking in the butterfly strips and the bruising that's already starting to bloom across his temple. Dried blood stains his shirt and suit jacket and Felicity idly wonders just how many designer suits Oliver has trashed in the past two years.

"I've had worse." He shrugs. "You okay?"

"Oh, you know. Masked gunmen are all in a day's work." She replies. "I suggested to the officer that they might interview you at a later date, what with the head wound and all. I figured you were probably getting a bit antsy."

"Like you wouldn't believe." He murmurs back. "I want to get back to the hotel to ring Digg before this gets splashed over the news. I don't want him worrying about us on top of everything that's going on with Lyla and the baby."

Felicity watches as the officer who had interviewed her heads over to the small spread of pastries that had been put out for their meeting. "Oh for heaven's sake, wait here while I go and talk to one of those detectives directly." She stalks across the room.

"Detective?" she calls. Both turn around, one tall and dark, the other only a few inches taller than her and blonde. Both attractive.

"Yes?" the blonde one replies.

"I'm Felicity Smoak, Mr Queen's executive assistant. I'd like to get Mr Queen back to his hotel now so he can rest. I trust your questions for him can wait for a few hours at least?" she uses what Roy refers to as her bossy voice, all while looking the blonde detective straight in the eye.

The two men exchange glances. "I suppose so, Miss Smoak." The blonde one says in a Jersey accent. "Do you need a ride back to your hotel?"

"That won't be necessary. Our driver is waiting downstairs. I gave the hotel details to one of your officers." She points out the officer she spoke to who is dusting icing sugar from off his uniform. "But here is mine and Mr Queen's cards in case you want to call us directly." Felicity fishes out her card and one of Oliver's that she keeps on hand.

Before either man can ask any more questions, Felicity hotfoots it over to Oliver, who has been joined by Jack and Tom.

"Felicity, I was just telling Jack and Tom that we should take a day and then regroup the day after tomorrow." Oliver says as she reaches his side.

"That sounds like an excellent idea. Hopefully the police will have some insights by then into who's responsible."

Jack and Tom exchange the briefest of glances and her words and Felicity knows that she's not the only one that spotted it, based on the speculative look on Oliver's face.

"Are you sure you don't need anything, Oliver?" Jack asks.

"We're fine, thanks. We'd better get going, the driver is waiting downstairs. Call us in the meantime if you hear anything." He shakes hands with both men and then leads Felicity out of the room, his hand ghosting over the small of her back as they walk.

* * *

They're relaxing on the couch when Oliver's phone rings. Well, Felicity is relaxing, Oliver is giving a good impression of a very tense person relaxing. His hand snaps out to grab the phone before the first ring ends and he puts it on speaker.

"Digg. How's Lyla?" He'd tried to call John the minute they got back to the hotel but had been forced to leave a message when the call went unanswered.

"Better. Her blood pressure is getting back to normal. They're still keeping an eye on the baby's vital signs, but it all looks good. By the way, thanks for having us moved to a private suite, much appreciated." Digg sounds considerably less shell-shocked than he did earlier that day after receiving Lyla's call.

"It was the least I could do." Oliver says lightly. Lyla's insurance through ARGUS was good, but she'd still been put in a shared room. A short conversation with the hospital administrator that morning and the commitment to pay cover the difference in costs had had Lyla moved to a room where she and Digg could get some privacy.

"Send Lyla our love, John." Felicity pipes up. She can almost hear the smile in Digg's voice as he replies that he will.

"How's the big deal going?" he asks. Felicity and Oliver exchange glances, each silently willing the other to tell Digg what has happened since he left. Felicity rolls her eyes and starts speaking.

"Oh, you know. Tech stuff that Oliver finds boring and financial stuff that I find boring." She says cheerfully.

"Felicity." Digg sighs. "I can tell there's something you don't want to tell me, so spill."

She shoots Oliver an incredulous look before turning back to the phone. "How the hell could you know that?" she demands.

"Oh I know you two well enough to know when you're keeping things to yourselves," Digg says enigmatically. "And stop stalling and tell me."

"Fine." She huffs. "We were in the middle of this meeting at Intuit today and suddenly these gunmen storm in-"

"_What?!_" Digg exclaims.

"It's okay, they were there for the program Intuit's been working on. It was nothing to do with Oliver or the Arrow, for once." Felicity rushed to reassure Digg, earning a look of annoyance from Oliver.

"I take offense to that." He speaks up. "It's not _always_ related to me."

"Yeah, right. You keep telling yourself that." Digg huffs. "So are you both all right?"

"Yes, we're both okay. I mean, Oliver did get a shotgun butt to the head so he's got a few stitches, but other than that we're okay."

"Oliver, given the sheer number of attacks on you in public, do you think you could at least incorporate some basic self-defence moves into your CEO persona? It's getting to the point where it looks _more_ suspicious that you can't at least defend yourself a little bit." Digg says.

Felicity glances over to see Oliver clenching his jaw slightly. She knows it's a huge effort for him to hold back from a fight when he's in CEO mode, and that once he's in a fight it's almost impossible for him to hold back his strength or skill, but Digg has a point.

"Fine." He manages eventually. "Next time we're held at gunpoint I'll make some sort of effort."

"That's all I ask." Digg replies, amusement in his voice. "Now how the hell did they get in there? That building doesn't have the greatest security, but it does have guards downstairs and cameras everywhere."

"I'm going to try and figure that out this afternoon, Digg." Felicity says. "I'm assuming that the cameras were turned off or put on a loop and the guards let through normally dressed men and they changed in a stairwell or something. I'll hack into Honolulu PD's system and see if they have any leads on that front."

"Okay. You do that, I'll get the first plane I can back there-"

"No!" "Absolutely not." Felicity and Oliver interject at the same time.

"Digg, you need to stay in Starling with Lyla," Oliver says firmly. "We can handle this."

"I don't like the idea of you two playing Hardy Boys without me." Digg says gruffly. "It never ends well when one of us is out of the game."

"Firstly, can I just object to that reference?" Felicity says. "The Hardy Boys? Really, Digg? Secondly, we're not in Starling City where every second person seems to want to kill Oliver, or take on the Arrow. This is Hawaii! People are chilled here. Well, obviously not these gunmen, but I am going to assume that they're very much in the minority compared with the rest of the populace and even then they're probably considerably more relaxed on weekends when they don't have to threaten innocent people with guns. And furthermore-"

"Felicity." Oliver interrupts. "Digg, we'll be careful. I promise we'll take hotel security with us on QC business and we'll take every precaution. But you are staying in Starling City with Lyla. And you can do that voluntarily, or I'll have Felicity put you on the no fly list."

Felicity shoots Oliver the thumbs up at his threat. "You know I can do it, John." She chimes in. "It would take me all of ten seconds."

Digg huffs. "Fine. But I want reports twice a day. And I want knowledge of any plans you two might have to do anything that could remotely be considered dangerous."

"Does that include activities on our days off?" Felicity asks. "Because the hotel offers this shark cage dive and I thought that could be kind of cool."

There's an oppressive silence emanating from the phone. After a beat or two, Digg resumes speaking. "Oliver, for the love of all things holy, keep our girl out of danger."

"Will do, Digg. Now go spend time with Lyla. I'll call you in the morning." Oliver leans over and swipes the call to an end. He glances up to see Felicity sitting with her arms crossed, an annoyed expression on her face.

"What?" he asks.

"Why is it that Digg feels the need to tell you to keep me safe, but doesn't think I need to keep you safe? Hmm? I think out of the two of us, you're the one most likely to end up bleeding. I mean, exhibit A!" she gestures towards his head. He automatically reaches up to touch it, feeling the light bandage the hotel doctor placed over the neat sutures.

"Digg worries about you, Felicity. And not," he wards off any interjections by raising his palms towards her. "Not because you're a woman or because you're still learning self-defence, but because he cares about you. Like a sister. We both do."

"You care about me like a sister?" she asks curiously.

"No! I mean, yes. I mean, I care about you, okay? You're my partner and I don't want to see you get hurt." Oliver can't help but compare how he's reacted in the past to Thea being in danger and Felicity being in danger. He flashes back briefly to the night in his office at QC, Count Vertigo standing behind Felicity, toying with her hair and then holding her up against him, a syringe at her neck. He hadn't hesitated to take the Count down permanently because he'd dared threaten Felicity.

"Oliver? Are you okay? You kind of zoned out for a second." Felicity asks, concern evident in her voice.

He stands up quickly. "Yeah, I'm fine. I might order us some dinner, okay? Did you want to start looking into Intuit's security feed?" He walks off as he talks, leaving Felicity watching him.

* * *

"Got it." Felicity says through a mouthful of sushi. She swallows before she chokes and gestures for Oliver to sit beside her. He shifts from his own chair to the couch where she's sitting cross legged and leans over her shoulder to look at the screen of her tablet.

"The security cameras were put on a seven minute loop at 11.46 am. It looks like the guards are just sitting there, but you can see the guard right off in the corner sneeze. It repeats every seven minutes." She speeds the footage up and points out the guard in question as the video runs through. Oliver leans closer. He can barely make out the guard's slight movement, particularly with the low quality video, but she's right.

"Nice work." He says, resting his hand slightly on her shoulder and squeezing. "Any footage from outside?"

"I'm hurt that you have to ask." She pouts theatrically, teasing a smile from him. "I accessed the city's security system, but apparently Honolulu is a lot more trusting of its citizens than Starling. There's only one camera within a block of the building and it's not trained on the building entrance."

"So we can't see who was going in to the building." Oliver sighs. "Damn it."

"Sorry. I accessed the police system and they didn't have much luck with the security guards. They gave generic descriptions of a group of well-dressed men in suits, dark hair but nothing on whether they were Hawaiian, Asian, Anglo. They could have literally been describing half the people working in the building." Felicity says. "Now what?"

Oliver leans back into the couch. "I hate to say it, but I think Tom and Jack knew a lot more about what happened today than they were letting on."

"You're talking about that look they gave each other just before we left the offices, aren't you?" Felicity jumps in. "I thought you'd spotted that as well."

"I'm glad it wasn't just me. It wasn't the reaction of two genuinely shocked people. So that makes me wonder if they knew the raid was going to happen, or at least suspected that something might happen." Oliver mused. "Do we know if any other companies had approached Intuit about XDC-52 before they made the pitch to QC?"

Felicity's fingertips pause over the keyboard attached to her tablet. "Do you want me to hack their system? I'm assuming that with the theft of XDC-52's specifications the deal with QC is off the table?"

Oliver runs a hand over his face, wincing slightly as he brushes over the bruising at his temple. "The company is worthless to us if XDC-52's been stolen. You know yourself that it's the jewel in the crown. The rest of their work is pedestrian at best, but that technology is worth every cent I was willing to throw at them."

"I just feel a little hinky breaking into their files if the deal might still go ahead. This would give us access to everything," Felicity points out. "I mean, we could find something that makes the company's value to QC plummet or rocket. It just feels a little corporate espionage-y."

"What do you suggest?" Oliver asks. "At this point we have absolutely nothing to go on and looking further into Intuit seems the next logical step. If we weren't caught up with QC business that's the first thing you'd do."

"I know. But it just feels like something Isobel would have done." Felicity shoots Oliver a quick glance. "Not that she would have done it for the same _reasons_, obviously. She would do it precisely to get an advantage."

"You're right." He sighs deeply. "We can't do this. Not until the deal is officially dead. And I'm hesitant to do that until I know more."

"So, we're at an impasse." Felicity says, flipping the lid on her tablet shut and placing it on the cushion on her other side.

"It seems that way."

"So…does that mean we're back on for cocktails by the pool tomorrow?"

**A/N: Yep, couldn't resist throwing in a tiny one-off nod to Hawaii Five-0 with the two detectives working the case.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: 50 reviews! Very exciting. Thanks for those, plus the follows and favourites. I appreciate them a lot. This chapter was a bit of a beast to write in parts, but I think it ended up ok. Hope you enjoy it.**

**Chapter 4**

"You were defending Miss Smoak?" Oliver nods at the officer's words. Honolulu PD had sent an officer to take his statement the following morning. They're sitting in the bungalow's expansive lounge, Felicity by his side on the couch and the officer sitting opposite.

"Yes. The leader threatened to start shooting people if Tom didn't hurry up with the data transfer and he indicated he was going to start with Felicity."

"Are you and Miss Smoak involved romantically?"

The unexpected question brings a scoff from Felicity and Oliver feels his expression harden.

"Miss Smoak is my friend and colleague, Officer. I'd like to think that if any of my other friends or colleagues were threatened my reaction would be the same. Besides, any personal relationship that may or may not exist between Miss Smoak and myself is clearly outside of the scope of this investigation. It was very clear that the gunmen were there for Intuit's technology, not because of me, my company, or my associate." Oliver snaps. "Now, I think we're done here. You can show yourself out."

He stands up, folding his arms over his chest as the officer flips his notebook shut and heads out.

"I'm thinking of getting some cards printed." Felicity says lightly. "Ones that say 'We're not sleeping together'. They really would come in handy." She stands up, smoothing down her skirt and offering Oliver a wry smile.

"I'm sorry about that. He was completely out of line with that question. I'm considering complaining to the lead detective."

Felicity leans over and places a hand on his forearm. "Don't bother. If you make a fuss they'll just think we have something to hide."

"And we don't." Oliver says in that low voice he uses just with her. "Do we?"

He feels her fingertips tense on his forearm and then she draws back her hand. "No, we don't."

The air between them feels thick with the sort of tension that hasn't been present since the downfall of Slade. The first few weeks after their show for Slade at the mansion had been tense, with them carefully circling around each other, unsure where the line between them was. Eventually, their easy relationship had returned as they navigated through getting back control of QC, setting up a new base of operations for the Arrow and working out a way to move forward with a working relationship with ARGUS.

"Anyway." Felicity says brightly, determined to shake off the lingering tension. "We don't have any meetings with Intuit and I did specify this as cocktail day. So shall I give the bar a ring?"

Oliver shakes his head. "Actually, I had something a little different in mind. I thought we could head into Chinatown and have a look around, maybe dim sum for lunch?"

"Sounds good. But we're going to have to do something about that before we go out." She gestures at his head and Oliver turns around to look at his reflection in one of the large mirrors in the room.

"You could be right." He grimaces. There's no swelling at his temple, but there is a fair amount of bruising radiating out from the site of his stitches. He figures he can go pretty much undetected in the city with sunglasses and a baseball cap, but the bruising is prominent enough to get people taking a second look and that's almost guaranteed to get him recognised.

"Come into the bathroom, I'll try and cover it up." Felicity flicks her hand in a 'follow me' gesture as she heads into the main bathroom she and Digg had been sharing – Oliver's larger suite came with an ensuite.

She gestures for him to take a seat and he perches on the edge of the large bathtub while Felicity pulls out her makeup bag. This isn't the first time she's had to cover bruises for him, but it feels different doing it here, in a hotel bathroom that smells like her shampoo, rather than in the foundry.

"Can I take the plaster off? I've got some flesh coloured ones here that will be a little less noticeable." He nods and she advances on him, her fingers teasing gently at the edge of the plaster. She carefully peels it off, being careful not to press on the bruising.

"There's a little dried blood from the sutures, let me get that first." She snags a packet of cotton swabs and wets the ends of one under the tap. She steps closer, lightly swirling the swab around his wound, cleaning off the dried blood.

"All gone?" he asks in a low voice. She's standing so close he can smell the violet scented perfume she's wearing and the thin-strapped tank top she's got allows him to see the scar high on her shoulder where she took a bullet to protect Sara.

"Yep." She breathes, taking a step back and dumping the swab in the trash can. "Do you want to just pat it dry with a towel and I'll get my makeup out. I didn't think to bring the stuff I normally use for you, so I'll have to do a bit of mixing with my bronzer to get the right shade."

He does as she asks while she pulls out various tubes of concealer and powder. Once he's done, she moves closer and starts gently dabbing yellowish concealer over the bruising. Her touch is gentle enough that he doesn't feel any twinges of pain, but he can't help but hold his breath as she works.

Felicity leans back slightly to examine her work, smoothing a bit more concealer in some areas. "Okay, powder now."

She loads up her brush and starts lightly dusting his forehead, pausing to use her fingertips to blend when necessary. He finds himself closing his eyes as she works, his other senses compensating so as well as smelling her perfume, he can hear the little hums she makes as she dusts his face. He's not sure if the bruising makes his skin extra sensitive, but every touch of her fingertips on his face makes him want to shiver.

"…not fair." He hears her murmur and he opens his eyes to find hers locked on his face. A slight blush creeps onto her cheeks.

"Did I say that out loud?" she asks, flicking her glance back to where she's working.

"Yep. What's not fair?" he asks, smiling.

"Your eyelashes. They're ridiculously long and dark. Do you know how much it would cost me to get lashes like that?" she complains.

He lets out a low laugh. "You sound like Thea. She used to accuse me of wearing mascara."

"You mean you didn't pre-island? Because it sounds like the sort of tactic the old Oliver Queen would use to attract women. Not that you'd need to resort to that." She adds hurriedly. "I mean, I reckon your eyelashes weren't the first thing most girls noticed."

"No, the thing they usually noticed first was in my pants." He quips.

Felicity actually drops the brush she's holding and it clatters to the floor, leaving a little shower of powder in its wake.

"I meant my wallet, Felicity." He deadpans, as she avoids looking at his eyes as she stoops to pick up the brush.

"I knew that." She retorts, her cheeks pink. "Now hold still. I need to put a strip over your stitches." Her fingers tremble ever so slightly as she smooths the plaster gently over his wound and then she takes a step back to admire her work.

"There. Anyone right in your face is going to spot a bit of bruising, but it should hold up for walking around the city." She shifts to one side so he can stand up and examine his head for himself in the bathroom mirror.

"Thanks, Felicity. You've done a great job." He turns his head, looking from various angles. Felicity is right, the bruise is covered enough for avoiding scrutiny as they wander the streets. Coupled with his hat and sunglasses, he should manage to walk around without anyone realising who he is and taking photos on their phone to send to TMZ.

"I'm going to ring the concierge and organise some transportation. Did you want to give Digg a call and give him an update?"

She nods and heads into her room to grab her phone, while he walks out towards his own suite.

Twenty minutes later, he's waiting out in front of the bungalow for her.

"No way." Felicity says as she walks outside.

"Oh come on. It's perfectly safe. I'm a good driver." Oliver says with a grin. He's straddling a large black motorcycle, his helmet propped on the tank in front of him and another smaller one hanging from one handlebar.

"Oliver. I'm not concerned about your driving. In case you haven't noticed, I am wearing a skirt because I expected you to hire a car like a normal person." Felicity hisses, flicking the filmy fabric to demonstrate her point. "I don't want all of Honolulu seeing my underwear."

"So put something else on." Oliver shrugs. "I'll wait."

With a huff, Felicity spins on her heel and heads back inside. She reappears a few minutes wearing purple low cut Chucks, a lightweight cream jacket covering her scoop neck tank top, and shorts. She's twisting her hair into a side braid as she walks, her purse replaced with a shoulder bag that crosses across her body to rest on one hip. She ties off the braid and slips on a pair of sunglasses.

He hands her the smaller of the helmets and she pulls it on before sliding one bare leg over the bike to sit behind him. She scoots forward, her thighs pressing against the outside of his and she leans in close, slipping her arms lightly around her waist.

"Ready?" he asks, pulling on his own helmet. He's suddenly regretting the thin tshirt he's wearing as Felicity's hold on him tightens.

"Yep, let's go." She says as he starts the engine. He revs in slightly and then pulls away down the drive.

* * *

Felicity curses her traitorous legs as she stumbles slightly getting off the bike. The combination of the thrumming motorcycle beneath her and being pressed against Oliver's muscular back for twenty minutes has left her in something of a state. She pulls off her helmet and hands it to Oliver, who secures them both with the bike.

He moves to her side a moment later, pulling his baseball cap out of his back pocket where he'd stowed it during their ride and putting it on. Felicity nods in approval as he slips on his sunglasses as well. The simple disguise would never fool anyone that knew Oliver, or was making a point of looking for him, but it should serve them well today.

"Do you know where you want to go?" Felicity asks as they exit the parking garage onto the street. "I've got this app-"

"I thought we could just wander, make it up as we go." Oliver interrupts. "Everything in our life now is so organised, either meetings at QC or finely planned missions at night. We never get to just experience things as they come."

She smiles up at him. "I like the sound of that."

They stroll easily along the streets, Oliver walking with his hands shoved in his pockets, pulling one out to rest lightly over Felicity's lower back as they cross busy streets, Felicity keeping up a stream of chatter about a variety of topics, ranging from the latest water cooler gossip from QC (that didn't feature them) to the last email she'd had from Sara.

On the way they stop to buy some fruit from the market vendors, Oliver conversing easily in Mandarin.

"I always forget," Felicity says as she pulls a plump strawberry from the paper bag proffered by Oliver, "that you speak Mandarin."

"Yao Fei taught me at first, then Shado." He replies. "I picked up a lot more in Hong Kong, learnt to speak it without an accent."

"You don't say much about Hong Kong. I'm guessing there's a good reason behind that." She says, her tone making it clear that she doesn't expect him to open up on the subject.

"It was hard. Not the same sort of hardship as the Island, but it was just after I thought I'd killed Slade." He says, surprising her. She'd expected a non-committal grunt. "I was at a crossroads and Hong Kong pushed me down the dark path, the path I stayed on until Tommy died."

Felicity doesn't respond for a moment, weighing her words. "Tommy would be proud, you know? Of what you've done for Starling. But I don't ever believe you could have been fully committed to a dark path, Oliver. There's too much good in you for that."

He lets out a humourless laugh. "Felicity, you always want to see the good in people, but you didn't know me then. I was a shell filled with anger and hatred."

She stops him with a hand on his arm. "I know you _now_, Oliver. I know the man you are and I believe that before the Island and during those five years, the man I know now was there. Hidden, but there. It just took all that pain and suffering to bring him out."

He gazes down at her. She's pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head and her bright blue eyes are fixed determinedly on his face, filled with certainty. He feels a rush of emotion, still disbelieving after everything he's done, all the lies he's told, that there's this one small and determined person that believes in him so much. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve _her_.

"This all feels a bit too heavy for a day off." She says, smiling at him. "Let's think of nicer things. Like how you're going to sit and eat your strawberries while I buy myself an awesome new dress."

He laughs, her words breaking the air of seriousness around them and allows her to loop her arm through his and drag him towards a small boutique across the street. The windows are filled with a rainbow of embroidered silk dresses, traditional-style cheongsam and more modern interpretations on the style.

Felicity immediately heads towards a pile of bolts of fabric, her fingers tripping over reds, blues and blacks, richly embroidered. Oliver obligingly waits to one side. He's been on enough shopping trips with Thea or Laurel to know his place – agree with whatever she says and pull out his wallet at the end.

"What colour do you think?" Felicity asks, holding a dark crimson and a delicate shell pink.

"Uh, they're both nice?" Oliver offers. Felicity rolls her eyes.

"Come on, Oliver. I'm not going to get all offended if you offer an actual opinion. I'm not one of _those_ girls." She shakes the bolts slightly, drawing his attention back to them.

"What about the green?" he asks, pointing to a bolt of dark green satin embroidered with a repeating pattern of dragons in a lighter green. It's close in colour to what he wears as the Arrow and a part of him likes the idea of Felicity draped in his colour.

She raises an eyebrow. "What am I, your groupie? There's a reason I leave the green to you, Oliver. It makes me look sallow." She pulls the bolt out and holds a length of fabric against her chest and he immediately sees what she means. It somehow dulls the colour of her skin and hair.

"Okay, okay, no green. Black?" he suggests, laughing.

He stands aside and watches with a small grin as Felicity rummages through the bolts, stepping in occasionally to translate in Mandarin to the shopkeeper that has popped up to assist Felicity. It's refreshing to shop with a woman who has a very firm idea on what she actually wants, and within half an hour Felicity has been measured and approved the final design. She pays a bit extra to have the finished dress delivered to their hotel later that afternoon, giving Oliver a look when his hand twitches towards his wallet.

"You know, I can't believe we made it out of there in half an hour." Oliver says as they return to the streets in search of a venue for lunch. "I don't think I've ever been dress shopping with a woman where it took less than two hours."

Felicity pulls a face. "Sounds like shopping with my Mom for a dress for prom, which I didn't really want to even go to. I saw a dress I could deal with within twenty minutes but she insisted we keep looking. Four hours we schlepped around all these dress shops and in the end I just went and got the one I wanted."

"Do you see your mother much?" he asks curiously.

"Not really. It's been a while since I went out to visit her, but I call her every few weeks." Felicity shrugs. "It's hard, we don't really have much in common."

Before he can reply, his phone chimes with an incoming message. "It's from Jack," he says, swiping the message open. "There's nothing new from the police investigation, but they've taken Tom's laptop in case the USB that was used also had some sort of Trojan embedded to infiltrate the network."

Felicity's head snaps up at that. "The network." She repeats slowly.

"Yeah, I suppose the police think the gunmen might have had more than one purpose." Oliver locks the screen on his phone and slides it back into his pocket.

"No, it's just got me thinking back to Intuit's original proposal to QC. You didn't read through the full documentation, did you?" Felicity drags him over to a low wall forming the border of a small garden courtyard between two shops.

"Nope. I just read the report and recommendations that you gave me." He points out. It's their usual method for going through potential acquisitions for Applied Sciences; Felicity reads the reports and prepares a brief overview and recommendations for Oliver.

"I can't believe it's taken me this long." Felicity mutters angrily, pulling her small tablet from her shoulder bag. She taps at the screen, bringing up the documents associated with Intuit and XDC-52. She sets a search on the proposal document and lets out a satisfied A-HA as the results pop up.

"Here." She says, selecting a result and thrusting the tablet into Oliver's hands. He scans it, not seeing what Felicity wants him to see.

"What? You're going to have to spell it out for me."

"The gunmen gave Tom a USB and told him to put all the files relating to XDC-52 on it. He used the laptop he had with him, which I'm assuming was his standard laptop connected wirelessly to Intuit's main network." She explains.

"So?"

"So, in their original proposal, it was made very clear that Intuit kept the full specifications for XDC-52 on computers that are kept offline. They only ever have the edited highlights, for want of a better term, on their network for presentations. All work on the coding is done offline to protect the program from being accessed by hackers, just in case anyone could make it through their firewall. Don't you see?" she asks Oliver, turning to face him. "There's no way the gunmen got the full program."

"Which raises the question, why haven't Tom and Jack mentioned that?" Oliver replies, frowning.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Still loving those reviews, follows and favourites. I love that lots of people seem to be enjoying this story. Hope you enjoy this next chapter!**

**Chapter 5**

"Let me get this straight. The program _hasn't_ been stolen?" Digg asks, his brows drawn together. Felicity leans closer to the tablet she has propped up on the coffee table in the lounge area. They'd grabbed lunch to go and rushed back to the privacy of the bungalow to contact Digg with the news of Felicity's realisation.

"I can't see how it could have been if Intuit were serious about the security measures they outlined in their proposal," Felicity replies, "and given the potential value of this software it seems incredibly unlikely that they wouldn't take every precaution possible."

"What could they possibly have to gain from letting you think that the program's been stolen?" Digg leans back in his chair, crossing his massive arms across his chest.

Felicity and Oliver exchange glances. "Considering the attack made the news, it's unlikely that they're holding out because they think another company is going to make a better offer. Every company is going to assume that whatever program Intuit had was the target of the gunmen and that massively devalues any potential offer." Oliver replies. "I got the impression that Tom at least was hoping that they might be some opportunity for him in the Applied Sciences division if the acquisition went ahead. He wouldn't jeopardise that for nothing."

"If they're not holding out because of hopes of a better offer, it's got to be because they're scared." Digg reasons. "Organised crime?"

"Let's face it, it's got to be that, right?" Felicity pipes up. "I mean, this is us. It _has_ to be organised crime. Because apparently we're not allowed to have a normal week of boring business meetings broken up by sunbathing by the pool in a bikini!"

Digg smirks. "Just so we're clear, you're the only one wearing a bikini in that situation, okay Felicity? I'm more of a one piece man, myself."

Felicity huffs, crossing her arms. "I knew this week was too good to be true."

Oliver lays his hand on her knee. "Hey. Just because Intuit is potentially caught up with some organised crime ring, it doesn't mean that we have to get involved."

Felicity rolls her eyes and turns to look at Oliver. "Oliver, can you honestly tell me that you'd be happy with keeping out of this? Queen Consolidated has been dragged into this mess as well."

He fixes his gaze on hers, Digg momentarily forgotten. "I'd drop it now if you asked me to." He says quietly.

Her breath catches as she takes in the expression in his eyes, the tone of his voice. "I…I could never ask you to do that." She replies softly. "That's not you and I'd never ask you to be something that you're not."

"Not even for a few days by the pool?" he teases, breaking the tension filled moment and she laughs.

"Not even for that."

"Well now we have that cleared up," Digg says, his voice filled with amusement, "What's your next step?"

Oliver and Felicity shift slightly on the couch, Oliver's hand moving back to his own lap and Felicity sitting up a little straighter.

"Honestly?" Oliver asks, "I'm not really sure. We're going into this with one hand behind our backs. The Arrow can't make an appearance here and we have no Lance to feed information to in the Honolulu PD. As for the business side of things, QC can't touch this company with a barge pole if there's a hint of organised crime involvement. The question is whether they were targeted because word about their program got out, or was there involvement from organised crime from the start?"

Felicity's phone chooses that moment to chime and she finds an email from Jack Reynolds' secretary. "We might have a way to find out," she announces after she's scanned the message. "Jack's invited us for dinner at his house tonight. It might be time to find out a little bit more about how Intuit got started."

"Are you ready, Felicity? The car will be here soon." Oliver asks through the closed bathroom door.

"Just finishing my hair," she mumbles back through a mouthful of bobby pins. Taking that as an invitation, the door opens and Oliver steps in, pausing as he scans her from head to foot.

The dress she'd ordered that morning had arrived not long after their video call to Digg and it fits like a glove. She'd chosen a more Western take on the traditional dress, with a fuller skirt that ends just above the knees. The mandarin collar flows into a lace panel across the yoke, with a plain black silk fitted bodice. The skirt is printed with silvery grey patterns of birds and flowers that is heavier towards the hem. One her feet are a pair of black satin slingbacks, with spindly high heels that raise her nearly four inches closer to him in height.

Felicity turns around, her hands in her hair. It's been twisted up in an elegant up do and she's pushing the last few pins in to keep it in place. She pulls the extra pins out of her mouth and drops them on the counter.

"Oh, we match." She says absently, nodding towards his black suit and silvery tie, before turning back to the mirror. He doesn't reply, watching as she applies a deep red lipstick.

"Hmm?" he finally speaks up, looking down at his tie. "So we do. I didn't even notice." He lies. He'd seen the silk she'd settled on and when she voiced her intentions to wear the new dress to dinner his hand had automatically gravitated towards the silver tie that echoed the print of her dress.

"Ready?" he repeats as she stows the lipstick in her small black clutch.

"Yep. So any ideas on how you're going to bring up the mob? Maybe over appetisers?" Felicity asks as they head towards the front door.

"Triad." He corrects absently as he holds the front door open for her. "If it's going to be anyone, it's going to be Triad. They're active here."

"That makes me feel so much better. Here I was worrying about meeting a whole new crime family and we're probably just going to hear about the Hawaiian branch of the Triad. We'll have to ask them if they want us to pass on any greetings to China White." Felicity replies sarcastically.

"You know they're not actually going to be at dinner," Oliver points out as they step towards the car.

"Oliver, you say that like it might actually be true." Felicity sighs as he opens the car door for her. "Given our trip so far, we're likely to be sitting next to them at the table."

"Welcome, so glad you can come." Jack says warmly when he opens his front door. The house is located in an affluent neighbourhood and while it doesn't come close to the size of some of the nearby houses, it's still an impressive place.

"Thanks for having us." Oliver replies as they step inside. A dark haired woman is sashaying down the corridor towards them and Jack turns at the sound of her heels on the hardwood floors.

"And this is my wife, Tanya. Tanya, Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak."

She smiles pleasantly, shaking Oliver's and Felicity's hands. "Nice to meet you both. Everyone else is in the dining room."

They follow their hosts to a large room dominated by a long table. Two other couples are there, including Tom and another brunette. Felicity is immediately conscious of the fact that everyone the others are very obviously all in relationships, leaving her and Oliver as the odd ones out. She's hyper aware of his hand resting lightly on the low of her back as they stand there while introductions are made, the heat of his palm warming her skin even with the barrier of her silk dress between them. It's a gesture Oliver does constantly, one no doubt drilled in to him as the proper thing for a man to do when escorting a woman in a formal situation. As the son of two powerful individuals used to living a very public life, Oliver has impeccable manners and the light pressure of his hand on her back should simply feel like a courtesy, but Felicity's certain any other person could repeat the gesture and she wouldn't have the same awareness.

"How are you enjoying your trip so far?" Tom's date, Sally, asks. Felicity eyes her with incredulity. It'd had been fairly obvious during the introductions that what Tom saw in Sally wasn't her sparkling intellect, but seriously? Had she no concept of what had happened at the office the day before?

"Um, apart from the masked gunmen threatening our lives, it's been great, I suppose?" Felicity replies slowly.

"We haven't really had much of an opportunity to see the island," Oliver says smoothly, pulling out Felicity's chair for her and then taking his own once she's seated. "Perhaps in another day or two."

Jack and his wife have hired a personal chef and servers for the night, and the servers quietly bring through plates of appetisers, along with bottles of wine. Felicity gratefully accepts a glass of red and sips slowly on it as she watches Oliver politely field questions from Sally. Across the table is Nathan Lyons, Intuit's finance man and his fiancée, Jade, who are holding are chatting with Tom.

"How long have you worked at Queen Consolidated, Felicity?" Tanya asks suddenly. Felicity turns her head to the woman beside her.

"I started there straight out of college, so nearly five years now." She replies. "I was very fortunate to get one of Queen Consolidated's graduate placements."

"And you and Oliver?" Tanya asks politely, watching Felicity over the rim of her glass as she takes a sip of wine.

Felicity nearly chokes on her own wine. "Oliver and I?" she asks.

"How long have you been seeing each other?"

"We're not seeing each other." Felicity says firmly. "He's my boss and my friend, that's it." She's so sick of this question.

Tanya raises one delicately arched eyebrow. "Oh, well there you go. My mistake."

Felicity wonders idly if it's just the fact that they're a man and woman working in close proximity that drives the questions, no doubt helped along by Oliver's playboy reputation, or is it something else? She knows she watches him more than she should, but he's gorgeous. She's seen the straightest of men pause to watch Oliver Queen walk across the room. The one sided crush of an executive assistant could hardly be driving the questions.

"You okay?" Oliver leans over to murmur in her ear. "You look like you want to scratch Tanya's eyes out."

"Just fine." She replies, forcing a smile and lifting her wine glass to her lips.

"Jack!" Tom calls out across the table. "Why on earth are you serving the cheap wine?"

"That's hardly a cheap bottle, Tom." Jack replies lightly. "But feel free to head down to the cellar to get something more to your liking."

"I'll do that." Tom stands up, buttoning up his jacket. "Back in a sec."

"Like he needs any more wine." Felicity huffs under her breath to Oliver. "He's already half sauced."

"_In vino veritas_." Oliver replies with a small wink. "Give him another twenty minutes and he'll be much more amenable to answering a few questions."

The conversation continues around the table, the servers moving silently around the room removing empty dishes and bringing in the next course. Felicity checks her watch surreptitiously. "Tom's been gone twenty minutes. Is he picking it up from the vineyard directly?"

She's obviously spoken a little louder than she'd thought, as Jack glances up at her words. "Tom still not back? I'll go see what's keeping him." He stands up and heads towards the door, stopping suddenly.

"No need, Mr Reynolds." Speaks a new voice. Felicity and Oliver spin around to see Tom being shoved into the room, his eyes wide and afraid and a man hard on his heels, gun in hand, three more men behind him.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Jack barks, backing up against the table.

"I want what I asked for yesterday, Mr Reynolds." The man snaps, with Oliver and Felicity recognising the voice as the gunman from Intuit's offices.

"You got the program!" Jack cries. "Tom gave it to you."

"We both know that's not right, don't we. You gave me the shell of a program. It looks like the real thing, but it's not complete. I want XDC-52 and I want it now." The man angles his gun at Jack.

"You mustn't be running it properly." Jack says, his voice shaking. "I swear it's all there. Tom put it on there."

The gunman advances, his gun pointed directly at Jack's head. "Stop lying."

"He can't get to it here!" Felicity blurts out, then her hand flies up to cover her mouth. The man turns his attention to her, the gun firmly pointed at her chest.

"Ah, Blondie. I remember you." He smirks.

"She doesn't work for Reynolds," Oliver snaps. "She can't help you."

"And you, of course." The gun shifts towards Oliver. "You obviously haven't learned your lesson."

Oliver holds his hands up in front of his face. "Hey. I'm just pointing out the truth. She's my executive assistant, we don't work for Intuit."

"And yet she seems to know all about the program. Go on, Blondie."

Felicity's eyes flick over to Oliver, whose jaw is clenched, a muscle twitching. His eyes are imploring her to keep her mouth shut. She glances over at Jack and Tom, both avoiding her eyes. It's clear they're not interested in cooperating, even if it means someone's going to get hurt.

"It's kept offline." She says at last. It's clear Jack and Tom aren't going to do anything, she figures if the gunmen know where to get what they want, they'll leave. "You need to access the computer directly in the Intuit offices."

"Get up." The man motions are Felicity with his gun. "You're coming with us."

"No!" Oliver growls. "She can't get you in to the building, she can't do anything more for you. Just leave her alone." His hands are clutching the arms of the dinner chair, adrenalin running through his body and his muscles tensing for a fight.

"Reynolds," the man snaps. "Give me your access card." When Jack looks to protest, one of the other gunmen backhands him viciously. Blood streams from a cut in his lip as he stares down the man in charge.

"Next one goes to your wife. Give me your access card now." The man snarls. Reluctantly, Jack slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out his wallet and the access card to Intuit's offices.

"You." The gunman turns back to Felicity. "You've got access to the building. Can you get into their system?"

Felicity's yet to find a system that she hasn't been able to crack, given enough time. She suspects that XDC-52 is protected heavily, but not enough to keep her out. Her eyes flick back to Oliver.

"You've got Intuit's own engineers here." Oliver points out, his voice rough with anger. "They can get you in in minutes, you don't need to take Felicity."

"Those same engineers that gave us a fake program and have lied right to our faces even with guns trained on them? I don't think so. Get up, Blondie."

"It's okay, Oliver. I'll do what they want and they'll let me go." She says, her voice quavering. "I'll do this for you and no one gets hurt, right? You'll let me go the second you have what you want?"

"This isn't where you negotiate. This is where you come with us before I start shooting people in this room. Starting with your boyfriend here."

"Okay, I'm coming. Just don't hurt anyone." She stands up and grabs her handbag and takes a few unsteady steps across the room.

"Leave the bag." The gunman says, motioning at her clutch.

"It's got my mini tablet in it." Felicity replies. "I need that if you want me to break into the system."

"Then take that out – slowly – and put the rest of your stuff back."

She does as he says, shooting Oliver one last loaded look over her shoulder as she's roughly dragged from the room. The three other gunmen remain behind.

Every cell in Oliver's body is primed for a fight. He knows if it was him alone in this room with three armed men he could take them all out in seconds, but there are too many people here that could potentially get injured. He can't risk it.

And so, Oliver Queen waits, helpless, while Felicity is dragged off into the night.

"Slow down, I'm going to fall." Felicity pleads, stumbling for the third time on her impossibly high heels.

"Take the stupid shoes off." Is the harsh response as the man pauses briefly. Felicity quickly toes off one slingback and ducks down to pull off the second and scoop up both by the heel straps. He grabs her arm again and moves more quickly towards one of the black cars waiting at the curb, its lights off. Felicity bites her lip as stray bits of ornamental gravel from the garden beds cut into her bare feet and she tries to watch her footing and avoid more pieces as best she can. He shoves her into the back of one car, sliding in beside her, his gun trained on her.

"Back to Intuit." He snaps at the driver, who pulls away smoothly. They wind through the suburban streets, speeding silently back towards the city centre.

Felicity huddles in the corner of the back seat, her mini tablet clutched tightly in one hand and her shoes in the other. Her heart is racing and the image of Oliver's face as she agreed to go with this man is all she can see. One glance filled with anger and fear and frustration and something deeper that her traitorous heart wants to put a name to but her brain won't allow.

"I do this and no one gets hurt, right?" she repeats, turning her face in the gunman's direction.

"That depends on you, Blondie. Get us in, get that program and don't alert the authorities and we'll see. Try to cross me in any way and the first person I'm going to have my men shoot is your bigshot boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend." She blurts automatically. Denying a deeper relationship with Oliver has become so second nature to her that she even does it with a gun pointed in her direction.

"What he is, is your weak spot." He replies, cruelly. "So you keep that in mind as you're getting me that program."

Oliver eyes the three armed men. They've taken up positions around the room, making it even more difficult for him to take any action. The rest of the dinner party guests are sitting around the table, one of the women (Tom's girlfriend? He has no idea) is sobbing quietly into her napkin. She's been crying ever since Felicity was taken and Oliver can tell it's starting to piss off their captors.

"Shut the bitch up." One of the men snarls. Nathan – the finance guy, so that's who she's here with – slings an arm around her shoulder and pulls her into his chest, making comforting noises and trying to get her to quieten down.

Oliver glances up at the clock on the side bar across the room. It's been twenty minutes since they left, they must be at Intuit by now. Under the table, Oliver clenches and releases his hands. He imagines the comforting and familiar weight of his bow in his left hand, his right fingers twitch as though they're nocking an arrow. He lets himself picture it again and again as the minutes tick by, how he would react if he had his bow and quiver, how he'd take out the cocky tall guy first, followed quickly by the stocky one. Under the mask, he can spot fear in the eyes of the third. He's certain that guy would take a shot and miss. He replays it over and over, imagining different scenarios, working through the options that aren't even options because he's unarmed and in amongst half a dozen innocent people.

His eyes flick back to the clock. Twenty five minutes down.

The gunman swipes Jack's card at the door and the lock turns to green, giving them entry. The building isn't staffed by security guards around the clock, just one guy doing rounds every ten minutes. They'd neatly avoided him as he strolled through the foyer and headed directly for the bank of elevators.

He's standing right beside her, the gun pressed against the small of her back where only hours earlier Oliver's hand had rested. Felicity pushes down the urge to arch away from that pressure, knowing it'll just result in the gun being shoved back against her even harder.

Within minutes they're in Intuit's offices. Felicity pauses, earning a shove from her captor.

"What are you stopping for? Keep moving." He grunts.

"I don't know where it's being kept." She explains. "We'll need to look in each office, check each computer to see if it's hooked to the network."

He shoves her again in response and she stumbles forward, heading towards the first office. In each room, she flicks on the lights and quickly checks each computer in the room, moving on when she sees the cable running to the network port. Eventually, they enter a room lined with shelves groaning under the weight of equipment. Tucked into a corner is a solitary work station and Felicity immediately knows she's found it.

"This is it." She says, hurrying forward and verifying the lack of network connection. The initial security protocols are easy enough to get through and then she has to hook her tablet in to run her decryption programs.

"What are you doing?" The man snaps, as he waits at her shoulder. She glances up.

"I've got decryption programs on my tablet. I'm running them to break through the next part of the firewall. I could do it manually, but it would take considerably longer and I'm guessing time is of the essence." Her fingers fly over the keyboard as she talks, running various programs and breaking down the firewall piece by piece.

Ten minutes later, she's still working. The room is hot and she can feel beads of sweat forming at her temples as she works. Felicity Smoak has worked under pressure – a LOT – it comes with the territory of being the Arrow's IT girl, but she can't every remember feeling like this. The gun has been pointed at her the entire time and she keeps thinking of Oliver back at the house, wondering whether or not he's okay.

Suddenly, the screen flashes and Felicity takes a gasping breath. "I'm in. I need to get a drive for the files."

"Here." A small drive is thrust at her and she takes it, inserting it into the computer before her and starting the download.

"How much longer?" he demands.

"About a minute, there's a lot of information here." Felicity replies, checking the transfer progress. She watches the screen as the percentage transferred increases on percentage point at a time. Finally, it hits one hundred and she pulls out the drive.

He snatches it from her and motions for her to get up. She does, snagging her shoes and table and leading the way out through the offices, the gunman at her back.

The black car is waiting for them around the corner. "This is where we part, Blondie." The man says cruelly, tugging her back from the car.

"What?" she gasps. "What about Oliver? What about the others?"

"You'll find out later." In the dark, she doesn't see the hand flying towards her head and it collects solidly with the side of her head, sending her toppling to the pavement.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: That was a bit cruel, wasn't it, leaving you on a cliffhanger? Let's pick up the action straight away. My continued thanks for the reviews, follows and favourites!**

**Chapter 6**

Nearly an hour after Felicity has been taken, Oliver's head snaps up at the sound of a mobile phone ringing. Their own phones had been confiscated earlier and Oliver watches as one of the men fishes a thin black phone from his pocket.

He grunts a greeting and then listens for a moment before swiping the call to an end and shoving the phone back in his pockets. He gestures to one of the other men, who pulls a handful of zip ties from his pocket.

"What's going on?" Oliver demands as the man starts zip-tying everyone's wrists together while his accomplice keeps a gun trained on them. "Where's Felicity, damn it?"

There's no response and Oliver briefly considers taking out the man that's reaching for his wrists, but he can't risk it, not while Felicity's fate is uncertain. He tenses his wrists as they're roughly zip tied so that the man can't tighten it fully. He'll need the extra slack to break the tie later.

Within a few minutes, the three men file out with a word. Oliver waits a few beats until he hears the slam of the door and then he concentrates his strength and breaks the tie, cutting slightly into his wrists. He ignores Jack's pleas to let him loose and grabs his phone from the pile on the sideboard. Felicity's bag is there, he snags it as he swipes through to the messaging app he knows Felicity has on her tablet. He types out a brief message and pockets his phone and then returns to the table to grab a knife. He slices through Jack's zip tie and hands him the knife to free the others.

A quick search locates the kitchen and waiting staff who inform him that a new guy that they'd had to hire for the night had been the one to let the men into the house. Unlike the gunmen, this guy hadn't been wearing a mask and they give him a brief description, including a forearm tattoo that Oliver recognises as Triad.

He finds himself checking his phone every few seconds, waiting for a message back from Felicity. He can hear Jack in the other room on the phone to the police and he decides to leave before they arrive. He quickly calls the hotel driver they've been using since their arrival who promises to arrive within a few minutes.

Oliver doesn't bother with checking on the rest of the group, he simply leaves.

* * *

Felicity hits the ground with a thud, landing heavily on her left hip. She temporarily sees stars from the backhand hit she took across the face and she blinks up as the rear lights on the escape car disappear up the road.

She tries to sit up and winces as she puts weight onto her grazed left hand. After a few moments, she manages to sit up, but she doesn't yet risk getting to her feet. She glances around to find that the streets in this part of town are completely deserted. The block is predominantly office buildings with a few small coffee shops dotted around that closed hours ago.

"Ugh," she whimpers, reaching up to tentatively touch her cheek. Her fingertips come back dotted with blood and she briefly recalls a heavy ring worn by her attacker. It obviously cut the skin when he hit her.

Suddenly, Felicity recalls that she still has her tablet and she looks around frantically for it. It's face down beside her shoes that she dropped as she fell and she reaches over to snag it, ignoring the throbbing pain in her hip as she shifts along the concrete.

It's turned itself off when it hit the ground and she holds her breath as she turns it on, hoping that it hasn't been damaged. She almost cries in relief as the welcome screen appears and she waits impatiently for it to boot up properly and connect to the local mobile network.

It beeps and she sees a message pop up through one of her apps. She swipes it open to find a brief message from Oliver demanding to know she's okay. She doesn't bother to respond and immediately video messages him so he'll know she's fine.

"Felicity!" his face is poorly lit in what she correctly guesses is the interior of a car, but she can make out the concern and anger there.

"I'm okay," she says quickly. "They left me outside Intuit's offices, can you please come and get me."

He turns away to quickly direct the driver and then he's looking back at her. "Is that blood on your face?" he demands.

"Yes, but I'm fine, I promise. Just get here soon, okay?" she tries to keep her voice steady, but she knows she's failing. Despite the warm night, she's shivering from the adrenalin crash and the deserted street is creeping her out.

"Two minutes away." She smiles in relief and ends the message.

* * *

She must have zoned out for a minute from the shock because the next thing Felicity knows is the sound of Oliver's voice shouting out to her. She blinks and sees him jumping out of a car that hasn't completely stopped and running over to her, leaving the door wide open.

"Felicity!" he hauls her towards his chest and she bites down on a whimper at the pain in her hip. He hears it regardless and immediately stops moving her, pulling back so his gaze can sweep over her to assess her injuries.

"My hip," she explains. "He hit me as they were leaving and I landed heavily on my hip."

At her words, his eyes fly up to her face where he finds a small cut high on her cheek and the start of bruising. His hand reaches up to cup her jaw and he traces his thumb lightly over the bruising.

"Do you want to go the hospital?" he asks, his voice tight.

Felicity shakes her head firmly. "No. No hospital. Just take me home, okay?"

He doesn't bother to point out that the hotel isn't home, he just hands her her tablet and shoes to hold and carefully scoops her up into his arms.

She winces slightly as he hurries back to the car, her body starting to let her know about the various bumps and scrapes that are going to start hurting properly very soon.

Oliver slides her carefully into the back of the car and crawls in beside her, pulling her into his side and slinging his arm around her.

"Hospital?" the driver asks, looking over into the back seat with concern.

"Hotel," Felicity replies firmly. "I'm okay." She presses more firmly into Oliver's side as a wave of chills sweep over her bare arms and legs.

"Come here," Oliver murmurs, shifting slightly so that he can open out the front of his jacket. He pulls her half into his lap and places her arms around his waist so that she has her face pressed against his chest and then he wraps the sides of the jacket around her, his arms curling around her. He can still feel her shudders, but she'll get a little warmer until he can get her back to the hotel.

Sooner than the posted speed limits would allow, they're back at the hotel and their driver hurries around to open the door so Oliver can get them out. Felicity is still buried against his chest so he bands one arm around her back and the other slides under her thighs so her legs dangle down past his hip.

"Can you grab the key card?" he asks the driver. "It's in Felicity's bag."

The driver snags the bag, along with Felicity's shoes and tablet from the back seat and hurries forward to let them in. He drops the items on a stand near the front door and, after Oliver's assurances that they'll be fine, leaves them.

Oliver carefully deposits Felicity on the couch and pulls a throw hanging over the back of it to wrap around her. The shock and adrenalin have definitely worn off and she's blinking up at him through half lidded eyes.

"Don't go to sleep yet, Felicity," he says. "Not yet."

She nods sleepily as he hurries over to his bathroom to find the antiseptic cream the doctor had left behind after doing his stitches, along with a warm wash cloth. Her eyes are closed when he returns, but she opens them at his request and he carefully cleans her face free of blood and applies some cream to the cut. Thankfully, it's small and will heal quickly.

"You're going to be stiff from the fall," he tells her. "Do you think you could manage a hot shower?"

"I don't know if I can stand." She confesses.

He doesn't want to put her to bed without warming her up first and a hot shower is the best way of doing that. "Come on, I'll help you."

She doesn't complain as he picks her up and carries her through to his bathroom. The shower there is enormous, with multiple jets and a slatted bench on one wall. She perks up a bit at the bright light in the room and starts trying to undo the zip at the back of her dress, but can't get her heavy arms up high enough to reach.

"Please," she says and Oliver takes a breath and grabs the zipper tag, pulling it down and exposing her back.

He pushes aside all the hot thoughts racing through his mind as he helps Felicity out of her dress and drops the pile of silk to one side. She's left wearing a black bra and underwear and he averts his gaze as best as possible.

"I'm just going to leave those on you," he says thickly in reference to the black scraps of silk and lace she wears. There's no way he can remove her underwear. Not like this.

She stumbles to her feet and he helps her get into the shower, setting her on the bench. He strips off down to his own boxer briefs so he can get in with her. He runs the water as hot as he thinks she can stand and then pulls her up against him under the spray. He angles the side jets at her legs, avoiding hitting her hip where a bruise is already blooming, and keeping her head away from the spray so her hair doesn't get wet.

After a few minutes, she stands a little more on her own and the shudders that wracked her body have stopped.

"You okay?" he asks, looking down at her. She still loosely enfolded in his arms, her right side pressed against him.

"Yeah. I think I'm ready to get out." She replies, her fingers clasping onto his forearms and her nails digging in slightly. He helps her get on the bench and turns off the water. He steps out and wraps one towel around his own waist and then brings a second to Felicity.

"Can you…can you manage?" he asks.

"I'll be fine, but can you grab me some dry clothes?" she asks softly, her face pink. He's not sure if it's from the heat of the shower or because she's finally noticed they've just showered together in their underwear.

Oliver leaves her there and heads to her room. Her pajamas are sitting on the end of her bed, so he grabs those and then, taking a breath, grabs some underwear from the bureau. He returns to find Felicity sitting on the closed toilet, the towel wrapped firmly around her and her wet underwear sitting in a pile on the ground. Silently, he deposits the clothes and then moves through to his room, shutting the door to the bathroom almost fully behind him. He dresses quickly in sweats and a tank top and then hovers by the door, waiting for the okay from Felicity.

"Oliver?" she calls.

He pokes his head around the door and finds her leaning heavily against the vanity, dressed in her pajamas.

"Can you help me with my hair? I need to get the pins out." Her face is looking a little more alert, but he suspects she'll asleep within minutes once he gets her in bed.

Wordlessly, he steps over to her side and starts carefully pulling the pins from her hair, letting her heavy locks drop to her shoulders.

"Thanks," she murmurs.

"Let's get you into bed," he replies, sliding an arm around her waist. She drops her head to his shoulder and he resists the urge to press a kiss to her hair.

"Oliver, I…I don't want to be alone. Can I stay with you?" she asks quietly.

His heart beats a little faster and his breath catches in his throat but he nods and leads her through to his suite. The bed's high and he has to help her climb up. He pulls the covers up around her and takes a step back.

"I've got to call Digg, okay? I'll be back in a few minutes."

She nods sleepily, closing her eyes and wriggling down further into the plush mattress as he walks back through to the bathroom to grab his phone from his suit pants.

"Oliver?" Digg says urgently. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine now. Sorry, it must be late there."

"It's not so late, don't worry. What happened?"

Oliver quickly describes the dinner and the return of the men that had held them at gunpoint at Intuit. Digg swears fluently as Oliver describes Felicity being taken to get the program.

"Oliver, promise me you're not going to lose it with her." Digg says. "You must be furious that she agreed to go with them."

"I was." He confesses. "I couldn't bear the thought of her being in danger and now she's end up injured. But I respect her decision. She did what she thought was necessary to keep the rest of us from getting hurt. And it worked."

Digg is silent on the other end of the phone for long enough that Oliver wonders if the connection has dropped out. "Digg? You still there?"

"Yeah." Digg says at last. "I think I'm in shock. I thought you just said you respected Felicity's decision to put herself in harm's way."

Oliver lets out a short half laugh of amusement. "Yeah, I know. I'm trying a new approach." After Slade, how can Oliver possibly not trust Felicity with her own safety? She agreed to his crazy plan and he put her in the clutches of a madman. He'll never stop worrying about her safety, but he trusts her judgement, even if he forgets that in the heat of the action.

"How's that working for you?"

"Pretty sure I've got a bunch of new grey hairs after tonight."

Digg snorts. "Oh this is going to be fun. So what's the next step? Are you going to pull the pin and head back to Starling?"

Oliver sighs and runs a hand over his head. "God, I should. I should be calling the pilot now to get the plane ready to head back to Starling in the hour."

"But?" Digg prompts.

"But I need to see this to the end." Oliver says. "I at least need to make sure that Queen Consolidated isn't going to be dragged into the mud on this if Jack and Tom are mixed up with the Triad."

"Okay," Digg replies. "Just be careful, man. The pair of you have got off with a few bumps and scrapes so far, let that be as far as it goes, okay?"

"I'll do my best."

Oliver swipes the call to an end. He has no idea what his next step is, short of formally cutting off the deal between Intuit and Queen Consolidated. Now that the program is definitely in the hands of the Triad, it's worthless to QC and he needs to protect the company from any fall out.

He heads back to his room, going through the bathroom and scooping up Felicity's dress and his suit as he goes. He hangs them up and steps over to the bed. Felicity is curled up asleep on her right side, facing in to his side of the bed. He drops his phone on the bedside table and slides in to bed, turning off the lamps and leaving them in darkness.

Oliver can hear the soft sounds of Felicity breathing and he lays stiffly on his back, willing himself to go to sleep. His muscles are still tense from the adrenalin rush he experienced earlier and he knows he'll have to work some of that off before he's got a chance of sleeping.

Carefully, he pushes back his side of the covers and drops to the ground beside the bed to do a set of push ups. He quickly hits a hundred and then transfers his weight on one arm.

"Oliver?" Felicity's sleepy voice makes him pause half way through the set on his second arm. "What are you doing?"

"I need to burn off some energy so I can sleep." He grunts, finishing off the set. After nights out on patrol in Starling City where his adrenaline runs riot, he usually works out for at least an hour so he's got any chance of grabbing a few hours of sleep.

"Come back to bed."

Her voice is thick with sleep but it makes Oliver's breath catch. He knows she means it innocently, but he can't help the surge of arousal that her words bring. He grunts in agreement, then quickly pushes out another fifty push ups, all the while thinking about the least arousing things possible. Finally, when he thinks he's got his control back, he slides back into bed, only to have Felicity wriggle across the wide expanse of mattress beside them and burrow into his side. He hesitates for just a moment before lifting his arm up so she can get closer still and then letting it fall down to curl around her waist.

Against all expectations, Oliver manages to fall asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Here we go, chapter 7. My continued thanks for the reviews, follows and favourites. I hope you enjoy this next chapter :)**

**Chapter 7**

When Felicity wakes the next morning, she immediately notices two things. The first is that she feels like she's been run over. Not by anything large like a truck, maybe a moped or something, but still run over. The second is that she isn't in her own bed and that she's sprawled across someone else. Someone larger, and altogether firmer. Someone whose large, warm hand has worked up under her top and is splayed across her ribs.

As she shifts slightly, the previous night's events rush forward in her memory and she lets out a small moan as her sore body protests at the movement.

"F'licity?" Oliver wakes at the sound she makes, his head lifting from where it was resting against the top of her head. She moves just enough so that she can look up into his face.

"I'm okay," she replies. "Just sore." His hand flexes ever so slightly against her side, but he makes no attempt to move it.

"Hang on," he murmurs, reaching across to the side table with his other hand and grabbing a packet of pain killers. "Take these and try to get a bit more sleep, it's still early."

She props herself up using his chest for leverage, wincing slightly, but manages to pop two pills out of the foil packet. She throws them to the back of her throat and Oliver reaches over again to grab a glass of water so she can swallow.

"Need another pillow?" he asks as he sets the glass back on the table and she lowers herself back down, resting her head on his chest.

"Nope, you'll do." She replies sleepily, closing her eyes. She feels him press a kiss into her hair and the hand on her ribs slides down slightly so that the tips of his fingers are grazing the waistband to her shorts.

* * *

Oliver's eyes flick over to the clock radio. He's been lying awake for the better part of an hour, Felicity curled against his side, trying to remind himself of all the reasons why he's kept her at arms' length for the past year and a half. It felt so natural, so _right_ to wake up with her in his arms that he doesn't know how he'll go back to what they had before.

He can't use her safety as an excuse, not after Slade and not after she's made it perfectly clear to him that it's her choice to put herself in harm's way if it's for the good of the mission. Besides, that's really only ever been the excuse he uses when he can't use the real reason – that he doesn't think he deserves to have the happiness that he knows Felicity would bring him. He wonders if he'd be able to make her happy, whether he could ever be the sort of man that Felicity deserves.

"Ow." Felicity moans quietly, rolling away from his side onto her back, interrupting his thoughts.

"And before you ask, I'm okay." She says thickly. "Although I would really like to know how the hell you manage to get back out there each night after you get injured. Is it those island herbs? If it is, please tell me you smuggled some here in your luggage."

He rolls on to his side facing her, propping his head up with one arm, a smile curving his lips.

"No herbs, sorry." He replies. "And I suppose I got used to the working through the pain on the island. Most of the time there wasn't an opportunity to let my body recover, not if I wanted to actually live."

Felicity shifts her head slightly so she can look at his face. "Which doesn't really explain why you don't give yourself time to recover now. Not when Roy and Digg are there to patrol if necessary. You're not on the island anymore, Oliver."

He shrugs. "Force of habit. Tell you what, I'll up the recovery time if you promise to give me a heads up before you offer yourself to the next bad guy."

Her face tightens a bit, her brows drawing together. "Is this where you rant at me and tell me I have to stay in the lair like the good little IT girl I am?"

"No," he replies, reaching out his free hand to tangle in one of hers. "This is where I tell you that I think you were brave to try and protect the rest of us but that I was terrified the entire time that I might lose you. Our lives mean we're going to be in danger from time to time, but that doesn't mean I have to like it when you're at risk."

"Oh." She watches the play of their fingers on the mattress between them, not sure how to respond.

"I trust you, Felicity. With my life and with yours. But I still want you to be safe, I care about you." Oliver says softly, tightening his grip on her hand.

"Like a sister, you mean." She says lightly.

He stills. Felicity being Felicity, she's given him an out, just like she did on the island all those months ago.

"No. Definitely not like a sister."

Her gaze flies up to meet his and her breath catches at the look in his eyes. "Oliver…"

He shifts closer, pausing to gauge her reaction. Her lips are parted and her breath quickens as he leans in, his lips feathering over hers. He goes to pull back, but then her arm snakes up to pull his head back down and she meets him fully for the next kiss. He slants his mouth over hers, drinking in the little moan from the back of her throat as he deepens the kiss. Her fingernails scratch at the nape of his neck and she arches her back slightly, pressing her breasts up against him.

"Ow!" she breaks the kiss and drops back to the mattress, wincing at the throbbing pain in her hip.

Oliver rests his forehead against hers, smiling in spite of himself.

"Sorry," she whispers, her hand shifting around to trace down the side of his jaw.

"It should be me apologising," he replies swiftly, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "Taking advantage of an injured woman."

"You don't hear me complaining, do you?" she smiles up at him. "But this might have to be continued when I can actually move without every one of my muscles hating on me. That's if you want to continue it, obviously. No pressure here, no sir."

He eases back smiling, taking in the hopeful look in her eyes.

"To be continued." He promises firmly.

* * *

Felicity decides to avoid the temptation of Oliver helping her to the shower and hobbles there herself. Half an hour later she emerges with her hair hanging loose in damp waves and her muscles considerably looser from the hot water. She finds Oliver in the lounge on the phone. He glances up at her entrance, his expression softening as she smiles. He speaks a few rapid words of Mandarin and then swipes the call to an end.

"So what's the plan?" she asks.

"Two things," he replies. "One, I need to formally end the negotiations between Intuit and Queen Consolidated. Secondly, I need to stop the Triad. We can't allow them to use that program."

"I think I can help with the second." Felicity says, settling on the couch beside him. "But I'll need my tablet."

Oliver gets up and walks over to the front door, collecting Felicity's possessions from where the driver left them the night before. He hands her the tablet and resumes his seat, looking at her expectantly.

"I used my tablet to hack into the security on the computer containing XDC-52. But at the same time, I also used it to embed a trojan into the program while it was being transferred." Her fingers tap and swipe at the screen and at the lack of reaction from Oliver, she glances up to see him looking at her with pride.

"Have I told you lately that you're remarkable?" he asks.

"No, you haven't. But you can tell me later." She smiles. "What I can tell you so far is that the program hasn't been used, so I don't have a location."

"I think I can find where they are." Oliver replies.

"The call?" Felicity asks, gesturing towards his phone. "Have you got Triad contacts as well as Bratva?"

"No contacts directly in the Triad, but I can get the information. I've been promised something within the hour."

Felicity considers this. "I don't like the idea of you going in against the Triad, Oliver. Not here without your bow and without Digg and Roy backing you up. Can't you just hand the information over to the police?"

"I could, I suppose, but I need to finish this myself. I want to make sure that program is destroyed before the Triad gets a chance to use it. And I need to find out exactly how involved Jack and Tom are, just in case Queen Consolidated gets implicated."

Felicity lets out a huff of annoyance. "Okay, but I'm coming with you. Not all the way!" she holds up her hands to ward off any objections. "I don't plan on going anywhere near the punching and the kicking and the general beating of Triad minions. But you're going to need support, Oliver. Tech support. The trojan should let me into their system when they start using the program and I can start disabling it remotely. We don't have access to any of our tech here and the best comms system I'll be able to get locally without raising suspicions is going to have a pretty limited range. And I'm not letting you go anywhere without me in your ear."

Oliver considers it and realises she's right. "Fine, but you're staying at the absolute limit of the comms range, Felicity."

She rolls her eyes good naturedly. "Okay. Now go call Digg. I need to figure out what we're going to need for tonight."

Felicity heads into her own room to check through her luggage. Unsurprisingly, her wardrobe choices are heavy on corporate and resort wear, light on surveillance attire. She makes a note on her tablet to get something suitable for herself and especially Oliver, along with a comms unit, some trackers and a burner phone to contact the police if required. She'll leave the weapons side of things to Oliver.

She can hear the murmur of voices from the lounge and she heads back out to see Oliver video calling Digg on her second tablet.

"Hey Digg," she calls out as she makes her way back to Oliver's side. Digg's face creases into a relieved smile as he takes in for himself that she's okay.

"You two going to be okay tonight?" he asks. "I don't really like this plan. You're going in practically blind."

"Digg, we'll be fine. I've got contacts working on getting information for me on the local Triad." Oliver replies.

"Contacts you can trust to give you accurate intel?"

"Contacts that know what will happen if they don't provide accurate intel." Oliver's keeps his tone light, but both Digg and Felicity are well are that he's deadly serious.

"I'd offer to do some digging here, but I assume you've got that covered, Felicity?" Digg asks.

She nods. "I still would really like you patched in though, just in case there's something that I need you to run on my systems in the lair."

"Fine. I'll send Roy out for the night to do Arrow duty. We've been keeping it pretty low key so far, but I'll tell him to make sure he's seen. I doubt anyone is going to make any connection between the Arrow and what you're going to do, but you can never be too careful. We don't want the press wondering about a vigilante in Hawaii just as Oliver Queen happens to be around."

The calls ends soon after and while Oliver waits for his contact to call him back, Felicity heads into town with one of the hotel's security staff. She makes him wait outside each shop as she buys the clothes and bits of tech that they'll need for tonight. Everything is paid for in cash and she spreads her purchases out. It's being overly cautious, but she doesn't want to risk anything being tied back to Oliver.

When the guard drops her back, she finds Oliver looking up blueprints and security feeds on her tablet.

"Did your contacts come through?" she asks, dropping her purchases on the floor beside the couch.

"Yeah. The Triad has a couple of bases that they alternate between, but current intel is that they're down at the shipyards." He shows her the satellite photos he has of the area, pointing out the building where the Triad are holed up.

"Okay. Did these contacts also happen to set you up with some weapons? Because I figured the hotel guard might have been a little suss if my emergency shopping trip for our hiking expedition detoured to a gun shop."

"You told him we were going hiking?" he asks.

"Well yeah. It's the only thing I could think of where we'd need additional gear that would be provided by the hotel. I mean, scuba was out because they have all the equipment here. But hiking boots and stuff? Not so much. Not that I bought boots, now that I think of it. Also, I thought you might want to steer clear of your signature colour while we're away from home, so everything I bought you is in black. But on the plus side, it's super slimming." Felicity pulls a handful of clothing out of one bag to show him.

"Slimming? Are you saying I'm fat?" he asks in mock outrage.

"Please. As if you have an ounce of fat anywhere on your body." She replies, poking at his stomach for good measure. His hand catches hers and he shifts closer.

Felicity's breath catches as she glances up and takes in the look in Oliver's eyes. "Oliver…"

"Felicity." He murmurs back, drawing out the syllables in her name in that way only he seems to do. His other hand comes up to cup her face and she automatically leans into his touch. He moves in closer, pausing to gauge her reaction.

"Oliver, what is this?" she whispers as he moves in to kiss her. He draws back, leaving his hand on her jaw. "Is this some weird reaction to everything that went down last night or, I don't know, some sort of strange island fever that you've suddenly contracted?"

His lips quirk slightly. "No island fever, Felicity. I guess I just realised last night with everything that happened that I didn't want to push you away any more."

"Oh." She says, biting down on her bottom lip. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"You tell me." He replies. "I know I want to be with you, Felicity, but I also know I don't deserve you."

"Hey. Stop that." She scolds. "You deserve happiness and you deserve love. And if you think I'm the one to give you that, well, we're doing it. God, I didn't mean we're doing _it._ I meant we're doing it as in we're doing the whole dating thing. Obviously it'd be nice if _it_ was involved at some stage, but-"

Her rambling is cut off abruptly as Oliver leans in and covers her lips with his. Felicity hums in approval, pressing against him as she opens her mouth and his tongue meets hers. He half drags her into his lap and her hands scrabble for purchase against his shirt. Oliver breaks the kiss, moving his mouth across her jaw to her neck where he lightly nips at the skin before soothing it with his tongue.

Felicity digs her fingertips into his chest, arching towards him as he works his way down her neck. "God, Oliver, don't stop." She whispers, one hand skimming up to the back of his head, holding him closer against her.

The abrupt ringing on his phone makes him pull back and she groans in disappointment. Oliver huffs in annoyance as he apologises. "Sorry, but I have to get this. It'll be about tonight."

She nods, her irritation at the interruption being soothed somewhat as she takes in how dilated his pupils are and the slight hitch in his breath. She feels a little flash of female satisfaction at his reaction to their kisses and can't help shimmying her hips a little in celebration, a move that has Oliver shooting her a warning glance as he steadies her on his lap and reaches for his phone. She starts to move back to her seat, but his arm tightens around her, keeping her perched across his thighs as he takes the call and begins a conversation in Mandarin.

"We need to meet my contact later tonight." He says a few minutes later as he swipes the call to an end. "He's organised some weapons plus a bike that's untraceable."

"So it's on?" Felicity asks. "We're taking down the Triad?"

"It's on." He replies


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: This chapter came together super fast, so rather than sit on it, I decided to post it. My usual thanks for the reviews, follows and favourites! Enjoy.**

**Chapter 8**

"You heard me correctly, Jack. Queen Consolidated is no longer interested in Intuit Media or XDC-52." Oliver says into his phone, fighting the urge to roll his eyes at Felicity who's standing beside him. The call had started off with Jack asking immediately after Felicity's welfare – Oliver had sent a short message the night before informing Jack that Felicity was fine but slightly injured and that Oliver would contact the police himself with a statement. But as soon as Oliver had announced his plans to drop the deal, Jack's tone had alternated between shock and anger.

"We had a deal, Oliver." He spits.

"No, we were in the preliminary negotiations of what could have possibly eventuated as a deal. You can't seriously expect that Queen Consolidated is going to remain interested in a company that had one and only profitable program that is now in the hands of organised crime." Oliver replies. "My board would kill me if I signed off on that."

"You'll be hearing from our lawyers." Jack threatens.

"I'd expect no less." Oliver says. "But know that Queen Consolidated's legal department responds aggressively to frivolous suits. You can try, but you won't win."

Before Jack can respond, Oliver ends the call. He turns to see Felicity with a look of concern on her face, her brows drawn together.

"What is it?" he asks, reaching out to place on hand on her shoulder.

"Nothing," she replies. "I guess I kind of feel a bit sorry for him. They had this multi-million dollar payday coming their way and now it's gone. That's got to be hard to swallow."

Oliver raises an eyebrow. "You feel sorry for the guy who assumed you were my assistant slash bit on the side, who also refused to cooperate with the Triad which indirectly resulted in you getting injured, and who very possibly might have been caught up somehow with the Triad in the first place?"

"Well when you put it like that it sounds silly." Felicity says, frowning. "But don't forget that we don't have any proof that Jack and Tom were mixed up with the Triad, Oliver."

"We'll find proof." Oliver says with certainty. "It's got to be there somewhere. This whole thing just doesn't feel like the Triad. They don't operate like this, they go after drugs and guns, not software programs. My guess is Jack or Tom got in debt to the Triad and this is the Triad's way of recouping a loss. They could use that program to make a fortune."

"So if the deal's off, does this mean I can go snooping through Intuit's system looking for proof?" she asks.

"Go ahead. Anything we find goes to the police for them to deal with." Oliver slides his hand off her shoulder and checks his watch. They're standing in the carpark of a local nature reserve. It's after closing and the car park is deserted. Felicity had scrambled the security camera settings as they arrived and now they're waiting for Oliver's contact to arrive with the weapons he'll need to take on the Triad.

"Are they late?" Felicity asks. "Or are we early? Is it good that we're early? It feels like you shouldn't be the first one to turn up to a black market weapons deal."

"We're early. And it's fine. Look, they're here now." Oliver shifts slightly in front of Felicity as a car rounds the bend up pulls up beside them. The door opens and a small Chinese man emerges. He and Oliver converse quietly in Mandarin and the man shows Oliver a cache of weapons in the boot of his car.

Felicity cranes her neck to see and watches as Oliver selects a handful of small knives, a long thin blade that's about the length of Felicity's forearm and a short but solid bo staff. As an afterthought, Oliver picks out a small pistol.

There's an exchange of cash and the man returns to the car and drives off.

"Um, didn't he forget to bring the bike?" Felicity asks.

Oliver holds up a set of keys that Felicity had missed being handed over. "It's waiting for us downtown. Here." He hands her the pistol and Felicity gingerly holds it between her thumb and index finger. Oliver huffs and presses it properly into her palm. She grimaces as she turns it over in her hand.

"You know how to shoot it, yes?" he asks.

"Yeah, Digg taught me, but I don't need this, Oliver. I'll be in the hire car, well out of the way." She points out.

"Humour me."

* * *

Two hours later, they're parked in a small dead end street near the shipyards, the bike Oliver collected parked next to Felicity's very cheap and beaten up hire car she rented using fake documentation. They'd bundled all of the weapons and clothing into the trunk of the car at the hotel to avoid being spotted by security and they've quickly taken turns to change while the other keeps an eye out.

Felicity takes in Oliver in his black combat trousers and black pullover. He's already tucked the knives in various pockets and holders and Felicity can just make out the lines of the thin Kevlar vest Digg had expressed couriered over from their stash once he'd heard of Oliver's plans, knowing that it wouldn't be something they would easily have been able to obtain. She watches as he straps the long knife in its sheath to his back and double checks he has everything in place.

"Got your comms?" she asks. He nods, tapping it where it's already fixed in place. She's watched him prepare to go out and take on the bad guy night after night back in Starling, but this feels different. She knows it's not the foreign location or the lack of green leather that is making it feel strange, but the tentative steps they'd taken earlier that afternoon towards each other. Felicity always feels nervous before her boys go out, but the nerves are gnawing at her stomach in a new way tonight.

"You ready?" Oliver asks quietly. It's dark, but she can see that his eyes are fixed on her face. She nods, then takes a few quick steps towards him and wraps her arms around him as best she can. He returns the embrace, burying his face in her hair and Felicity lifts her head up, nudging his jaw up so she can press her lips to his.

"For luck." She breathes. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

He presses one last kiss to her lips and then pulls on the balaclava she'd bought that afternoon, straddles the unmarked black motorbike and kicks it into life. She returns to the car and starts it, grimacing as it splutters into life, driving off with Oliver on her tail. As she slows to pull over at the spot they agreed for her to wait at, Oliver drives past on towards the shipyards. She watches the tail light of his bike disappear as she dials Digg on her phone and slips the Bluetooth earpiece on her left ear. Her right ear has the comms link to Oliver.

"Felicity." Digg's deep voice says. She can hear the tap of his fingers hitting her keyboards and she makes a mental not to have another chat with him about aggressive typing upon their return to Starling.

"All go, Digg. Have you got the satellite feed up?" she asks, swiping her tablet to life and bringing up the remote access feed to her system at the lair.

"Yeah. It's a go. You can access the feeds now." Digg replies, tapping away with a few more hard keystrokes.

Felicity types away at the screen, remotely accessing the lair's more sophisticated computer system. The satellite feed that Digg accessed appears on her screen and she follows Oliver's progress as he moves towards the ship yards.

"Felicity?" She can see that Oliver's stopped the bike several hundred feet from their intended target and is now on foot.

"Right here, Oliver." She replies. "Just scanning the area now for heat signatures." A few taps later and she's switched the satellite vision to infrared and zooms in. "I count ten. Six in the main port building two hundred feet to your left. Four on the building perimeter."

She hears the steady sound of his breathing as he moves quietly towards the four men. They're separated and spaced far enough apart that Oliver should be able to easily take each one down before moving to the next.

Felicity watches on the satellite feed as Oliver silently attacks the first men, easily overwhelming him and leaving him unconscious and unarmed. The next three follow in quick succession, the last putting up a little more fight than his comrades before the inevitable. He empties their guns of ammunition and takes the knives that one was carrying.

"Security cameras are all disabled." Felicity updates Oliver, swiping closed a window on her tablet where she'd accessed the system.

He creeps closer to the building, weapons at the ready. It's poorly lit, but Felicity knows that Oliver can see a hell of a lot better than she can in the dark.

"I think they might be playing cards." She tells him. "The heat signatures are grouped in a circle. Could be all in a circle singing Kumbaya for all I know, but I'm going to go with cards as my final guess."

She can hear Digg give a snort of amusement through his line.

"Going in." Oliver says, neatly ignoring the unnecessary information.

The small flare of heat on the screen representing Oliver slips inside the building and she starts to hear the chatter of Mandarin through her earpiece as he moves further into the building. Then within seconds there's the sound of shouts, Oliver's low grunts as he fights his way into the room and the howls of pain as he dispatches man after man.

"Where's XDC-52?" he growls low and sounding as unlike Oliver Queen as it's possible to without a voice modulator, and Felicity knows he's left one man conscious to try and extract the information he needs.

She can hear a meaty thwack that she suspects is Oliver's fist hitting the man's face and then the question is repeated in Mandarin.

"He's not cooperating Felicity, can you run a scan from there for any wireless activity? They've got to have a laptop or something here, surely."

"I'm too far away. I need to get closer. Oliver…" she trails off, waiting for him to acknowledge her.

Two beats pass, then three and then he gives a short grunt of acceptance and Felicity starts the car. Her eyes flick back and forth between the road ahead of her and her tablet on the seat beside her, waiting for her equipment to get in range of the docks. The bars indicating proximity suddenly light up and she slams on the brakes, swerving to the side of the road. She's far closer to the docks than she's comfortable with; a quick glance out the side window confirms she's only a few hundred feet from Oliver, she can make out his bike thirty feet away.

"I'm in. Give me a second." She types away furiously, starting off her translation apps so she can get into the Mandarin-based system. "Copying everything now for the police, Oliver, but there's no sign of the program having been copied across yet. The heat signature is picking up some very low level readings from the room to your right. I'd try there if I were you. You're looking for a red usb drive with black characters down one side."

She hears some scuffling noises and a thud, presumably a newly unconscious man hitting the floor in Oliver's wake as he heads towards the room she indicated. She can hear him rifling through equipment.

"Computers are here, but no drive. It's not here, Felicity."

"Pockets. Check pockets. One of them has to have it on them." She orders. It has to be there.

"Nothing." He huffs a few minutes later.

Felicity swears. "We're going to have to wait until it's used then. Any copy made is going to contain my Trojan and I'll be able to destroy it remotely. Just let me wipe their system and notify the police."

"Felicity? Incoming, tell Oliver." Digg's voice announces. Felicity swipes back to the window on her tablet with the satellite feed and swears again.

"Oliver, half a dozen more men heading your way from the southern end of the docks. Get out now." She types more quickly, letting loose viruses that quickly work to corrupt the systems and obliterate any trace of her having hacked in.

She hears shouts through the comms, quickly followed by the sound of gunshot. "Oliver!"

"Give me a second." He grunts, the sound of him attacking someone filtering through her earpiece. "Start moving, I'll be right behind you."

She hears more shouts as she turns the key in the ignition. The cheap car splutters and refuses to turn over.

"Felicity. Hurry up. At least one of them understands English, they know someone's nearby helping me and they're directing men towards you. Move now!"

"The car won't start!" she cries, frantically trying it again, pressing furiously on the accelerator.

"Don't flood the engine!" Digg warns in her other ear. "I can hear you pumping the gas pedal from here. Ease up."

She obeys Digg, trying the car again and again. The sounds of gunshots are louder and out of the corner of her eye she can make out the flare of muzzle fire in the building where Oliver is.

"Oliver, hurry up!" she urges, turning the key again. The engine coughs but catches. She can still hear the sounds of fighting as she nurses the engine, revving it slightly.

"Right behind you." He grunts. She watches the tablet as one figure darts away and runs out the door. Her head swivels to look out the window and she can just make out movement in the distance, heading her way.

"Is that you I can see?" she asks breathlessly. Despite his order to leave, she won't until she knows for sure he's right behind her.

"Yes. Now move!" his voice is tight and slightly laboured. She watches a few seconds more as he heads towards the bike, glancing down at her tablet to see he's now being pursued.

"They're about fifty feet behind you, Oliver." She says breathlessly, watching the flare of more gunfire aimed in his direction.

"Felicity, goddamn it!" he shouts. "I'm fine, just leave and head towards the rendezvous point."

"Felicity, he's fine." Digg pipes up. "You need to move."

She reluctantly puts the car in gear and speeds off as fast as she dares without headlights. Once she's turned the corner out of sight, she flips the lights on and heads quickly towards the rendezvous point – an area known for its busy nightlife. She dumps the car and heads on foot with a handbag containing her tablet to the spot they agreed to meet in, retrieving a carrier bag from a garden bed that they'd stashed earlier. Her own surveillance outfit had consisted of black jeans and a sweater with ballet flats, her hair pulled back in a bun. She removes the sweater, revealing a sparkly camisole and pulls the elastic from her hair, dumping the sweater in a trash can as she goes.

"Digg? I'm going to end the call now. We'll ring when we're back in the hotel." At Digg's confirmation, she ends the call and slips off the Bluetooth earpiece.

"Felicity?" Oliver's voice crackles in her ear, signalling that he's catching up to her and has returned to being within the comms unit's limited range.

"I'm here. I've got your jacket, dump the clothes as you go." She says as she turns a corner and finds the club they'd agreed on ahead of her, patrons spilling out onto the pavement. She stops, pulling a phone out of her pocket and pretending to text as she waits for Oliver, her heart pounding.

The comms unit again flares into life, the sounds of Oliver's bike getting clearer the closer he gets to her. She hears the engine cut and then the sound of Oliver's tread as he jogs along the pavement together with the slight rustle of clothing as he peels off the gloves, balaclava and pullover he'd been wearing, followed by the rasp of the Velcro straps on the Kevlar.

"Oliver?"

"Nearly there."

She glances around, waiting for him to appear, her breath catching as she finally makes out his figure half a block away, down to a dark grey fitted shirt and the black combat trousers. Even from this distance, she can make out a slight limp. She hurries towards him in what she hopes is a casual fashion, thrusting the lightweight jacket at him and running her eyes over his face. There's the slight shadowing of a bruise forming on his jaw and a smear of blood on his bicep that is quickly covered by his jacket. She wonders how many other cuts and bruises the rest of his clothes are hiding.

He shrugs the jacket on properly and pulls her into his side as they move up to the club. The plan is to disappear into the nightclub crowd for a while so they're seen, before heading back to the hotel, but all Felicity wants to do is get back. Her body is tingling with adrenaline and she wants nothing more than to launch herself at Oliver and make sure he's completely fine.

"Let's just leave," she whispers. "They didn't follow you, did they?"

"No, I left them way behind. Still."

As they pause on the footpath, a large group of people stumble collectively out of the club. "Let's tag along with them, they're too drunk to notice some extras. I can doctor the nightclub footage if necessary." Felicity nudges Oliver, motioning to the group.

He nods and they attach themselves easily to the back of the group, Oliver playing to his limp so that it looks like he's just too drunk to walk properly, Felicity half propping him up on one side. They follow the group for half a block to a nearby cab rank and as the group tries to gain admittance to another bar, Felicity hails a cab.

"Where to, love?" the driver asks. She gives him the direction and then shoves at Oliver, who's still play acting, looming over her and swaying ever so slightly.

"Big night?" the driver asks lightly, glancing in the rear mirror.

"For some of us," she replies in an annoyed tone. "It was supposed to be a romantic dinner, but then someone decided they'd rather start shotting Jägermeister with some loser at the bar." She keeps up the prattle of a wronged girlfriend all the way to the hotel, where the driver drops them at the main gate.

Once the cab is out of sight, Oliver straightens up and shoots her a grin. "You play the angry girlfriend far too well. Should I be worried?"

She grins back. "That depends. If you behave yourself that will be the first and last time you see that performance."

"Duly noted." He slings an arm around her shoulder. "Let's get home."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Okay, here's where we finally earn that M rating! Just one more short chapter to go after this one. My continued thanks to everyone that's taken the time to read this story and especially to those of you who have reviewed, followed or favourited. Enjoy!**

**Chapter 9**

Felicity holds the front door to their bungalow open and allows Oliver to limp in. The walk from the main building has been harder on his knee than expected and his face is slightly pinched with pain.

"Go sit on the couch and I'll get some supplies." Felicity instructs him, dumping her back on a side table and disappearing into her bathroom. Her small travel medical kit is looking pretty sparse, having been hit with both Oliver's head injury and her own scrapes and bruises. She vows to bring a standard size kit next time, regardless of how short or boring the trip is supposed to be.

She returns to find Oliver has stripped off his jacket and is inspecting a graze on his arm.

"Were you shot in the arm?" she demands, getting closer so she can look for herself.

"Technically yes," he replies. "But it's just a scrape, Felicity. No stitches required, so it doesn't really count."

Felicity rolls her eyes. "I can't believe we've got to the point where you casually decide whether or not your gunshot wounds count based on the number of stitches required."

"For the record, anything less than three stitches doesn't count." His lips quirk up slightly at one corner and she resists the urge to swat him. Instead, she passes him a bottle of disinfectant so he can swab the scrape.

"Put your leg up on the coffee table while I get some ice." He does as she orders, wincing slightly and Felicity frowns. "That should be braced. I'm going to ring the concierge and see if they can check if the hotel doctor has a brace."

"Felicity, it doesn't need a brace. The ice will be fine."

She stares him down, hands on hip. "Oliver. You didn't give that knee nearly enough time to recover after Slade. If you don't look after it, you're going to do some serious and permanent damage."

Oliver lets out a huff of annoyance. "Okay, okay, I'll wear the brace."

Fifteen minutes later, one of the porters drops the brace and a pail of ice off and Oliver dutifully applies both.

"You know," he says, gingerly placing a towel-wrapped bundle of ice on his knee, "this is really going to interfere with my plans for the evening."

"Hmm?" Felicity hums from her position at his side. He'd removed his tshirt and she's concentrating on swabbing a shallow cut on his ribs and deciding whether or not butterfly strips are required. "What plans?"

Oliver reaches over to still her hand. "The plans that involved you and me and some activities that QC's human resources department would classify as inappropriate between the CEO and his number two."

Felicity's head shoots up and her eyes meet his, her cheeks flushing with colour. "How inappropriate?" she breathes.

"Very." He says in a low voice. His hand reaches up and he trails the backs of his fingers back and forth along the bare skin at the edge of her camisole. She leans into his touch, watching the concentrated look on Oliver's face as his fingers move back and forth, dipping down ever so slightly under the edge of her top to trace over the swell of her breasts.

"Oliver." She murmurs, the swabs forgotten as she moves towards him, swinging on leg over so she's kneeling either side of his thighs. His hands settle at her waist and he looks up at her with eyes darkened with desire. Felicity braces her hands on his shoulders and slowly leans in to press her lips against his, her tongue flicking against the seam of his mouth. He allows her to deepen the kiss and his hands tighten on her hips, pulling her down so she's settled on his lap.

Felicity can feel her heart racing as she breaks the kiss and moves her mouth along Oliver's jaw, nipping occasionally and soothing with her tongue. His hands move up from her hips and slip under her camisole, tracing around the smooth expanse of skin, the rough callouses on his fingers leaving tingles in their wake and thrilling her with every sweep of his hands.

She pulls back, breathing heavily and keeps her eyes on his as she reaches down to the edge of her camisole and starts to pull it up. Impatient, Oliver helps, dragging it up over her head and flinging it behind them. His eyes drop down to take in the lightly tanned skin and her black bra and somehow his eyes darken further.

Felicity decides he's looked his fill and she leans back in to capture his mouth with hers, tugging his bottom lip between her teeth and then allowing him to control the kiss, one of his hands reaching up to angle her face to his satisfaction. She wriggles in his lap, feeling him hard and long beneath her and she swallows his groan, the hand on her hip tightening and pressing her down against him.

She reaches back to release the clasp on her bra when Oliver's phone rings loudly. She pulls back, panting softly, her fingers poised at the back of her bra.

"That'll be Digg," she says. "We were supposed to call him when we got back. He'll keep trying until we answer."

Oliver swears, loudly and fluently, closing his eyes briefly and trying to regain his control. Felicity leans back and snags his phone from the coffee table and hands it to him, his hand on her hip preventing her from crawling off his lap.

"Digg." He answers, his voice low and calm. She smiles in spite of herself, impressed by the fact that he sounds like Digg interrupted a nice quiet game of cards instead of a rather torrid makeout session.

"Let me put you on speaker, Felicity is right here." She glares at him, and he winks back, knowing full well she's still trying to catch her breath.

"Hey Digg." She manages, swivelling her hips and smirking at Oliver's reaction.

"You okay, Felicity?" Digg asks. "You sound funny."

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I had to run for the phone. Oliver's knee's playing up so he's couch bound at the minute." She replies quickly.

"So it went down okay?"

"We couldn't find the program, but Felicity copied their hard drives for information. The police should be looking at it right now." Oliver supplies.

"The trojan I embedded when I copied XDC-52 onto the Triad's drive will alert me the second they try to use it, Digg. I'll be able to remotely destroy it." Felicity chimes in. She glances around to see where Oliver threw her top; it's somewhat disconcerting talking to Digg while she sits on Oliver's lap in only a bra.

"Do you want to upload the files to our servers, Felicity?" Digg asks. "I can start running your search programs for any evidence that Jack and Tom were involved with the Triad."

She raises herself slightly so she can tug her phone from her pocket. "Give me a second, Digg. I uploaded the information to the cloud." A few swipes later and she's accessed the files and started the transfer to the lair's servers. "Should be transferring now."

"Yep," Digg confirms and she winces slightly as she hears him pounding at her keyboard. "Transfer is starting. Any injuries besides Oliver's knee?"

"Just a few scrapes, Digg, nothing to worry about." Oliver replies, ignoring the look Felicity shoots his way.

"He got shot in the arm, Digg," Felicity reports. "But apparently it doesn't count because it doesn't need any stitches."

"Sounds about right to me." Digg says and Felicity pokes her tongue out at the phone. "Are you two heading back tomorrow?"

Oliver's glance meets Felicity's and he raises one eyebrow in query.

"No way, Digg." She replies. "I came here with the promise of sun and poolside cocktails."

"Oh?" he says lightly. "I thought you were there for business."

"The sun and poolside cocktails were implied. We're booked up another two nights and Oliver's schedule back in Starling is clear."

"You heard the lady, Digg. Looks like we'll be back in a couple of days." Oliver says, the hand on her hip edging across the waistband of her jeans to the button clasp.

"Don't worry, Digg, I'll bring you back one of those dancing hula girls for the dashboard of the Bentley." Felicity says, holding back a gasp as Oliver's fingers make short work of the button and zip on her jeans.

"Okay, call me if anything else comes up."

"Will do." Oliver says, swiping the call to an end, turning the phone off and tossing it onto the couch. Felicity's mouth is pressed against his in an instant, her fingers fumbling for her bra clasp.

She breaks the kiss long enough to pull off the bra, dropping it to the ground beside them. Oliver lets out a small growl and then hauls her up against him more firmly so his mouth can reach her breasts. Felicity gasps as his tongue swirls around one nipple, her breath catching as she curls her hands around his neck to hold him closer to where she wants him.

"Get these off," he mutters against her chest, tugging on her jeans. She gets to her feet, wobbling slightly, and shimmies out of the jeans, leaving on her black bikini briefs. He's dragging her back onto his lap in an instant, his hands roaming up and down her bare legs as his mouth alternates between her breasts.

Felicity is mindless with pleasure, her fingers are digging into Oliver's shoulder muscles as he works her into a lather. She presses down against him, the sensation so much more intense with the extra layer of her jeans gone from between them and she knows from the answering jerk of his hips that he's enjoying it too.

"Oliver," she whimpers, pulling his head up for a searing kiss. She lets her hands drop down to fumble for his belt and he helps her, as anxious as she is to remove another barrier.

"Your knee." She gasps as he lifts up to work his trousers down his hips, leaving just his box briefs between them.

"Fuck my knee." He grunts in response, abandoning his trousers halfway down his thighs and pulling her face back to his.

His hand slips between them and traces lightly across her underwear covered centre and she jerks up slightly. His fingers find the elastic edge of her underwear and then her tablet chirps.

The cursing that Oliver let loose at Digg's call pales in comparison as he voices his displeasure at the current interruption. Felicity is close to throwing her beloved tablet at the nearest wall until she realises what the chirp signals.

"The trojan!" she cries out. Oliver reluctantly loosens his grip so she can reach for the tablet and then she starts swiping and typing.

"They've activated the program. Give me thirty seconds to shut this down."

"You've got twenty." Oliver warns, his hand slipping back to the edge of her underwear. She bites down hard on her lip as his fingers inch closer to her core. She can feel beads of sweat forming at her brow as she desperately tries to concentrate all while Oliver's hands are on her.

"Nearly there!" she says, her voice catching as his fingers sweep her folds. "Done!"

She cries out as he sinks a finger within her and her tablet drops to the couch, forgotten as the first finger is joined by a second. Once his thumb brushes over the small bundle of nerves, Felicity almost forgets her own name as her pleasure crashes around her. Oliver grins smugly as she collapses against his chest, her breath catching and her body trembling.

"Oh my God." She gasps, her body still rocking with desire as his hand traces circles on her thigh.

"Before this goes any further, turn off the phones and tablets. I can't be responsible for my actions if we get interrupted again." Oliver says, kissing his way down her neck.

Felicity turns off the phones in reach and then remembers the land line. Reluctantly, she climbs off Oliver's laps, her legs wobbling with every step, and pulls each landline handset out of the wall jack. She returns to find Oliver has removed his brace and pushed his trousers the rest of the way off. He starts to stand as she reaches his side and she shoves him back down.

"You're resting that knee, Oliver." She demands. He starts to protest but the words are lost in his throat as she drags down her underwear and kicks them to one side, leaving her completely naked in front of him.

Felicity's heart is racing in her chest as she resumes her place on his lap, her eyes lock on to his as she reaches between them to trace his length through his boxer briefs. His hips jerk up and she grins as she leans forward to kiss him, her hand reaching past the cotton fabric until he's in her grip. She swallows every groan from him as she palms his length, working him into the same frenzied state he'd got her into.

"Enough!" he gasps, breaking the kiss and pulling her hand away. He pulls her hips down and slides into her. They both still, gasping for breath as her body stretches around him.

Felicity whimpers as his hands hold her hips still as she tries to move. "Oliver, please!"

His hands slide up to cup her breasts and Felicity arches her back, drawing him in further. Soon she's moving mindlessly with pleasure and his hips are jerking up to meet each movement. She's so close and she slides her hand down to touch herself, bringing herself back to that peak. It only takes Oliver leaning forward to capture one rosy nipple with his mouth for her to explode. She cries his name as her body shudders and Oliver's hips slam up into her as he chases his own release. Moments later, he throws his head back, shouting her name as he climaxes.

Felicity draws a shuddering breath as she leans forward to rest against his chest. His arms slip around her waist, loosely holding her to him and she feels him pressing a kiss in her hair.

* * *

Much later, they lay tangled in Oliver's bed, Felicity laying across his chest and his arms wrapped around her.

"Best trip ever." Felicity murmurs, drawing a low laugh from Oliver.

"Even with the head wounds and hostage situations and tangles with the Triad?" he asks teasingly.

"Don't forget the lack of sunbathing time and, more crucially, the fact that I've had only one cocktail in four days." She adds. "We've got two whole days to make up for that though. After you see the doctor tomorrow morning."

"Felicity-"

"Oliver. You need pain relief for that knee. Besides," her voice drops and she trails a hand down his abdomen. "Imagine what we could do if you could actually move properly."

"Oh, I can imagine all right." He replies, his voice rough as her hand creeps lower. "In the meantime, we'll have to make do." She squeals as he drags her over him and reaches up to cover her mouth with his.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Here we go, the last chapter of Trouble in Paradise. My apologies for the wait, but real life just gets in the way some time! Thanks to everyone that's taken the time to read, review, favourite and follow this story. Hope you enjoy this.**

**Chapter ten**

Felicity wakes to persistent knocking on the front door of the bungalow. She tries to move, but is trapped by an arm curled around her, the hand at the end cupping one of her bare breasts. She feels her entire face flush as she realises that it's Oliver behind her, curled around the length of her body, their bare skin pressed together.

"Ignore it." Oliver's voice murmurs into her hair. "They'll go away eventually." His arm tightens, somehow pulling her even closer against him. Felicity smothers a gasp as she feels his hard length pressed against her backside and she somehow resists the urge to roll her hips back towards him.

The knocking continues, followed by a voice calling out "Mr Queen! Miss Smoak!"

"Oh, enough of this!" Felicity says, firmly pulling Oliver's arm away and gingerly climbing out of bed. She spots one of Oliver's dress shirts draped over a chair and pulls it on, buttoning it quickly as she pads out to the foyer.

"Yes?" she asks as she opens the door to reveal a relieved looking bellboy.

"I've got a message from Mr Diggle, ma'am. He said it's urgent and for you or Mr Queen to call him immediately. He said he's been trying to reach you all morning."

"He could have called the landline." Felicity yawns, before recalling that she'd unplugged them the night before so they couldn't be interrupted. It hadn't occurred to her to plug them back in when Oliver had dragged her towards his room, his hands all over her body and his mouth fixed on her neck.

"I believe there might be a problem with the landlines?" The bellboy says delicately. "We were unable to transfer Mr Diggle's calls from Reception. Would you like me to check them for you?"

"That's okay, I'll check them myself." Felicity replies with a blush. She pulls the door closed a little more behind her, remembering that hers and Oliver's clothes are strewn around the lounge.

"Thank you for passing on the message." She says politely. "I'll be sure to call Mr Diggle straight away." She snags a note from the small fold of money that Oliver left on a table by the door for occasions like this and passes it to the bellboy, who hurries off with a quick thanks.

On her way back to the bedroom, Felicity plugs the landlines back in and snags both her phone as well as Oliver's. She powers her own on to find eight missed calls from Digg.

"Oops." She says, showing Oliver. He's sitting up in bed, leaning back against the headboard, the sheets pooled low around his hips.

"Were we supposed to call Digg this morning?" he asks, accepting his own phone from Felicity and finding the same number of missed calls.

"Nope. Maybe he's got news. You'd better call him. No video calls." She warns, slipping back into bed beside him, still wearing his shirt.

He stretches his arm around her shoulders and tucks her against his side while he swipes at his phone to bring up Digg's number. He's barely got time to put it on speaker when Digg answers.

"What the hell, Oliver!" Digg growls down the line. "I've been trying to get hold of you two for hours."

"So I understand." Oliver replies. "We turned off the phones last night. It's been an insane few days and an uninterrupted night was on the cards." He purposefully doesn't mention exactly what activity that wanted uninterrupted and Felicity bites her lip to stop the giggle that's threatening to come out.

"Landlines too?" Digg asks. "I've been harassing reception all morning and they kept saying the line was engaged."

"That was me, Digg." Felicity pipes up. "I ordered room service last night and I mustn't have put the phone back on the hook properly."

Digg lets out a disbelieving grunt. "Right. Well next time you want an "uninterrupted night"," he drags out the words so they know that he knows exactly what they're playing at "can you at least leave one phone on and check the damn thing once in a while?"

"Sure. Will do." Felicity promises. She glances up at Oliver who looks like he has no intention of following that request for the remainder of their stay.

"So what's the emergency, Digg?" Oliver asks. "Everyone is Starling's okay?"

"Yeah, everyone's fine. Lyla will be home tomorrow and Roy busted up a drug gang as the Arrow which made the papers. I rang because I found evidence in the Triad's files linking them to Intuit. It turns out Jack Reynolds has a gambling problem. He got in deep with the Triad at one of their underground casinos and they accepted partial payment in the form of silent co ownership in Intuit. At the time, Intuit had one of those addictive gaming apps that hooks everyone for a few weeks and brings in the cash. It looks like Jack tried to get rid of them once they moved towards developing XDC-52 and he started courting QC."

"So he managed to pay off his debt?" Felicity asks.

"Most of it. He was probably planning on paying them off with the money he got from QC. Problem is the Triad realised what he was trying to do. There's a few emails here between Triad members talking about giving Reynolds warnings. Somehow they've found out about the program and decided it's worth a lot."

"It sounds like there's enough there to protect QC against any suit Intuit might bring up for the deal turning south." Oliver comments. "I'll ring the lawyers today and steer them in the direction of Honolulu PD so they can get that information through the right channels. We can hardly have the Arrow magically providing the documents."

"That'll be made easier by the story out in the Hawaiian papers this morning announcing the arrest of key Triad members in relation to the robbery of Intuit and the associated B&E and hostage situation at Reynolds' house. There's a clear trail there for the QC lawyers to follow. It shouldn't be too long before the police find the link between Intuit and the Triad anyway." Digg replies.

"Great. Does this mean we can finally relax?" Felicity pipes up with a yawn. "Because if this is what a business junket is supposed to be like I don't think I want to go to the next one."

Oliver lets out a huff of laughter and the arm he's slung around her shoulders tightens slightly. "Unfortunately, Miss Smoak, I'll require my Technical Advisor on all future business trips."

"Oh really?" she replies archly. "So I'll be there for skills other than secretarial?"

"Definitely." His tone is positively lascivious and Felicity blushes to the roots of her hair.

"Uh, guys?" Digg speaks up. "Still on the phone. I feel like I've wandered into something I really don't want to be included in. I'll see you two back in Starling in two days."

Digg ends the call and Oliver drops his phone on the side table before dragging Felicity back underneath him and taking her mouth in a searing kiss.

* * *

_Two months later_

"Hurry up!" Felicity shouts, tottering down the hotel hall on her four inch heels. She nearly stumbles as the wheels of her suitcase catch in the carpet. She reaches the elevator and pushes impatiently at the button, glancing behind her to see Oliver striding down the hall, his hair still damp from the shower they'd shared and his hands grappling with several pieces of luggage.

"You know, we could have called down to the concierge for someone to help with the bags." He points out, reaching her side and dumping the bags without ceremony. "Alternatively, you could have packed a little lighter considering we're only here for four days."

"And what, exactly, could I have left behind?" Felicity jabs fiercely at the elevator button.

"The first aid bag for a start."

"That is not negotiable and you know it."

"I just don't understand why we need to take the portable defibrillator."

"Because we might need it." Felicity draws out her answer slowly, as if she's talking to a very stupid person.

"We're in Gotham, Felicity, not the middle of the Amazon. I'm pretty sure we can find medical help in one of the biggest and richest cities in the country if we need it." Oliver leans over to snag her hand as she moves to press the button again. He gives it a squeeze and keeps hold of it.

"You said something very similar two weeks ago when we were visiting Barry and yet we still ended up having to rely on my supplies after you and Barry got into that stupid competition. Honestly, the combination of whisky, arrows and super speed was never going to end well."

Oliver bites down on his lip to keep in the bark of laughter that's threatening to escape. Unable to take out her impatience with the elevator button, she's shifting from side to side. It's only been fifteen minutes since their shower had been interrupted by Digg's call to say the baby was on the way and Felicity's somehow managed to not only throw together all of their luggage, but reschedule the jet to take them back to Starling early.

"We're not going to miss anything, you know." He points out. "First babies take ages to arrive."

"Television and movies have taught me otherwise." She replies. "You barely make it to the hospital and then whoosh! Baby."

Oliver wisely chooses not to reply and instead picks up the bags to move into the elevator that's finally arrived. He drops the bags into the corner of the elevator and leans back against the back wall, lightly crossing his arms. Felicity bustles in beside him and checks her phone yet again.

"You're annoyingly calm about this." Felicity says to Oliver, taking in his casual pose. "You'd better not be this calm when it's our baby on the way."

Oliver's eyes cut to Felicity's, which are wide with alarm. "Not that there's a baby now! Or that there will be anytime soon. Or at all, because we've been dating for like two minutes. Plus, there's all the birth control. So that's one target you won't be hitting anytime soon. Not that I doubt your ability to do so, I mean you're a superhero, there's got to be some super sp-"

"I get it, Felicity." Oliver interrupts with a smile. He unfolds his arms and drags her in against his side. "For the record, I'm pretty sure I'll be a complete mess if that day ever comes."

**End.**


End file.
